Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION BILL (By Order)

Read a Second time and committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOCIAL SERVICES

Families (Expenditure Patterns)

Sir B. Rhys Williams: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will initiate new studies into the cost of maintaining children in families of differing sizes; and if he will study the effects of recent changes in the cost of living on patterns of expenditure of families.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): My Department is doing some experimental work to see whether the data now available are adequate to enable us to draw conclusions from them about the expenditure patterns of different sizes of family.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Does my right hon. Friend accept the need, in view of the rise in the cost of living, to give further aid selectively to families?

Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend will know that the family income supplement ceiling and maximum are to be raised from 1st April. I am sure that his point has general validity. My right hon. Friends and I would like to consider it.

Mr. Simon Mahon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are serious problems in families already, irrespective of size, class or financial position? Would

he bear in mind that mental health and other things are often more important than a family's financial position?

Sir K. Joseph: I entirely agree.

Mrs. Castle: When do the Government intend to keep their Election promise to increase family allowances?

Sir K. Joseph: The right hon. Lady knows that we have debated this so-called Election promise a number of times at great length in the House.

Alcoholism

Mr. Fowler: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how much money was devoted by his Department to treatment and research into the problems of alcoholism in the years 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971; and if he will make a statement.

The Under-Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Michael Alison): The cost of treating alcoholism cannot be separately identified. My Department has specifically financed research on alcoholism only since 1970; about £10,000 was spent in that year and about £18,000 in 1971. This excludes some research undertaken with funds which my Department provides for use at the discretion of local hospital research committees.

Mr. Fowler: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the increase in the amount of resources devoted to research. Would he not agree that the problems of alcoholism raise a very serious social problem on lines very similar to the much more publicised problem of drugs? Therefore, would he not also agree that it is very important that we should progressively devote more of our resources to research in this area?

Mr. Alison: I accept what my hon. Friend says. He will also be encouraged to know that my right hon. Friend has decided to apply an extra £2 million to this sector in the four years starting 1971–72.

German Measles (Vaccination)

3. Dr. Stuttaford: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many girls were vaccinated against German measles in 1970 and 1971.

Mr. Alison: The scheme was launched in September, 1970, and returns by local health authorities show that 112,220 girls in England were vaccinated against rubella in 1970. Figures for 1971 are not yet available.

Dr. Stuttaford: Is my hon. Friend aware that although these figures may be encouraging as a start we still have a very long way to go? To take just one abnormality, is he aware, for instance, that one in a thousand children are born deaf, that about 15 per cent. are probably due to German measles and that these figures can be applied across the whole range of congenital defects? Therefore, would he do everything to encourage every girl who might conceivably be having a baby at some stage in the future to be vaccinated against German measles?

Mr. Alison: I accept the real benefits which can come from vaccination. My hon. Friend will realise that the 1970 vaccinations started only in September of that year, so the figures represent only three months' work. I am sure that the 1971 figures will be very much higher.

Mr. Pavitt: Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that this is the greatest breakthrough in the battle against deafness for 100 years? In that light, will he accede to his hon. Friend's request to take television time and step up the whole programme of increasing the age range of those liable to suffer from rubella to be vaccinated before deafness results?

Mr. Alison: We accept the very important development that this represents. The hon. Gentleman knows that vaccination is offered to all girls between their eleventh and fourteenth birthdays.

Supplementary Benefits

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether he is satisfied with the operation of the Social Security Act, 1971, insofar as it applies to the payment of supplementary benefits in industrial disputes; and if he will make a statement.

Sir Keith Joseph: I am satisfied that the Act has achieved its stated purpose which, as I said in the debate on the Second Reading, was to counteract certain abuses of the supplementary benefits scheme; namely the high level of dis-

regards of income tax refunds and strike pay, which enabled a striker receiving them to have as much income as an ordinarily unemployed man, and reliance on supplementary benefit instead of advances of wages after a strike.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Surely my right hon. Friend would not ask the House to accept that in the passage of the Act it would be expected to pay over £6 million for supplementary benefit in the case of a single strike, when this was not the sort of situation that was foreseen? Would he bear in mind that there is resentment from our constituents about the way in which they are required to kiss the rod by having to subsidise strikes which cause very grave inconvenience and even hardship?

Sir K. Joseph: The Act did not purport to end the situation in which the dependants of strikers receive benefits of their resources justify it during a strike. What the Act set out to do—and I stated this—was to end certain abuses, and in that it was successful. I accept my hon. Friend's point that there is a great deal of resentment from supporters of both sides of the House about the payment of public money to the dependants of strikers. The Government have undertaken to review the position in the light of our experience during the miners' strike.

Mr. Milne: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the amount of payments in social security during the dispute reflect the deplorably low rate of wages prevailing in that industry? Will he make certain that he does not submit to the blandishments of his hon. Friends who want this very valuable service to be removed entirely?

Sir K. Joseph: There is no evidence that it is only the low paid, who might be thought to have less chance to save, who go for supplementary benefits for their families during a strike, as opposed to those who are higher paid but who just have not saved enough.

Mr. Redmond: Does my hon. Friend accept that no one on this side of the House wishes to see families of strikers suffering—

Mr. William Price: The right hon. Gentleman does.

Mr. Redmond: —for what their father does? On the other hand, would he encourage the trade unions to contribute towards the cost of strikes instead of the whole thing falling on the State?

Sir K. Joseph: That is a point of view with which I and many others have much sympathy.

Mr. O'Malley: Does not the amount of money paid in supplementary benefit to the dependants of strikers represent only a tiny fraction of the amount paid in taxation by the miners in any given year? Secondly, as the right hon. Gentleman is reviewing the current situation, would he agree that it would not be conducive to good industrial relations if the Supplementary Benefit Commission were to be used as a weapon against strikers by starving even their wives or children into submission?

Sir K. Joseph: It is no good hon. Gentlemen opposite, particularly from the Front Bench, seeking to avoid the issue. The Government of the day have to reconcile two conflicting aspects of this problem—on the one hand, the protection of wives and children, and, on the other, the protection of taxpayers from the voluntary hardship to wives and children that results from strikes.

Mr. Duffy: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what additional steps he took during the exceptional conditions arising from the coal strike to bring to the attention of people likely to be in need, the existence of supplementary benefits for special needs such as extra heating.

Mr. Dean: A number of people who are within the scope of the supplementary benefits scheme may find difficulty in meeting their fuel bills because they had to use alternative and more expensive forms of heating during the miners' strike. The local offices of my Department and the social services departments of local authorities have been authorised to tell them that extra help may be available under the scheme to meet this expense.

Mr. Duffy: Is the Minister aware that there appears to be some evidence of fuel shortage among elderly people in areas like Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, where supply to old people was carefully

preserved? Will he therefore tell the House what additional steps his Department took to safeguard the rights of old people during that crisis, and to alert them to their entitlement?

Mr. Dean: Our officers had an extremely difficult time during the strike, and the whole House will wish to pay tribute to them and to the local authority social service departments for the work that they did to try to avoid hardship. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that in any case where a supplementary pensioner had no option but to spend more than the normal amount on heating that additional spending will be made up by the Commission.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: Does my hon. Friend accept the view, which we understand is held by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stetchford (Mr. Roy Jenkins), that the living standards of retired people will be safeguarded only if there is restraint on the part of the population as a whole?

Mr. Dean: I am sure that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. A big step that has been taken is the annual review of pensions.

Mr. Dempsey: When the Minister is considering cases of exceptional need could he also look at the rate of the allowances given for special heating, for instance? I find that in my area the average is about 26p a week. As the cost of fuel has risen considerably, is it not about time that this was raised to a more realistic rate?

Mr. Dean: The scale rates take account of the cost of heating, food and other items. The review is taking place, and my right hon. Friend has said that the results will come into operation in October.

Pensions

Mr. Skinner: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if, in his next review of retirement pensions, he will consider the proposal in the Trades Union Congress Economic Review 1972, a copy of which is in his possession, that the level of such pensions should be increased by £2.

Mr. Strang: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make


a statement on the representations which have been made to him for an immediate £2 increase in the national insurance pension.

Sir Keith Joseph: As soon as our proposals arising from this year's review are ready I shall make a statement. Until then I cannot make any comment.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that there is a great need for this £2 increase immediately, as has been suggested in the T.U.C. economic review, which the T.U.C. leaders referred to when they met the Prime Minister last week? Taking into account the fact that the 3 per cent. increase which emanated from the last pension increase has now been overtaken by the inflationary spiral in the cost of living index, surely the right hon. Gentleman must realise that it is necessary to give pensioners more money immediately instead of waiting until the autumn.

Sir K. Joseph: I am well aware of the T.U.C.'s point of view. I have also to bear in mind the cost of any rise in increased contributions. It is not correct to say that the recent increase has been eroded. There was an increase of 20 per cent. All pensions have, of course, lost some of their value between up-ratings.

Mr. Lane: Will my right hon. Friend keep in mind that if our right hon. Friend's Budget next week foreshadows another substantial increase in the retirement pension later in the year, no feature of the Budget will be more widely welcomed?

Sir K. Joseph: My hon. Friend does not have to go in for speculation here. The Government are commited to an up-rating of pensions and related benefits in October this year.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware of the views of the National Council of Labour, which sent a deputation to the Chancellor and to himself on the same point as the T.U.C. only recently? If the payments are not increased until October of this year, will not their comparison with average earnings be more unfavourable than at any time since 1960?

Sir K. Joseph: I would not think that that is true. We cannot tell until we see

how prices and earnings move. But I am aware of the right hon. Lady's participation in the deputation to which she refers.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his estimate of loss to the revenue of abolishing the earnings rule for retirement pensioners up to a limit of £1,500 income per year per person.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): The effect would be very similar to that indicated in my reply to my hon. Friend on 7th March.—[Vol. 832, c. 283.]

Mr. Chapman: Would my hon. Friend consult his right hon. Friend about these proposals? Would he not agree that apart from the wider beneficial effects that it would have on stimulating the economy it would help to remove much of the bitterness and resentment felt by that section of the community that has suffered most from inflation under successive Governments in the past few years?

Mr. Dean: My hon. Friend will appreciate that to abolish the earnings rule would cost about £110 million a year, and that the bulk of this would go to people already in full time work and therefore earnings. I remind the House that there was a substantial improvement last September, when the amount that could be earned was increased by no less than £2, and in the case of a wife under the age of 60, by nearly £6.

Mr. Tinn: Would the Minister agree that these and similar provisions ought to be more frequently adjusted upwards to take account of the falling value of money, which otherwise brings into the purview of the provisions people who ought not and were never intended to be covered by them?

Mr. Dean: As I mentioned, last September's increase of £2 in the amount that can be earned was a substantial one. The Government are committed to keep these figures under review.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: I welcome the increase that the Government have introduced. Would my hon. Friend agree that although there would be a significant cost in making the level still higher, there would also be a gain to society as a


whole? A further movement in that direction would be welcomed in all parts of the House.

Mr. Dean: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. It is for that reason that we are keeping the figure under review.

Mr. Pardoe: There is a tax aspect of the earnings rule as well. For instance, as a result of the recent rise in agricultural wages a retired agricultural worker can now work for only two days of the week without being taxed, whereas he used to be able to work for three days. Would the hon. Gentleman have discussions with his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to sort out this matter?

Mr. Dean: Yes. I am sure that the hon. Member appreciates that he is now on a different point. I take note of it, and I will have discussions about it.

Mr. Kaufman: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether, in his forthcoming legislation on pensions, he will include a provision compelling employers to refund an employee's superannuation contributions when that employee leaves his employment before retirement; and whether he will seek to backdate this provision to 1st July, 1970.

Mr. Dean: No, Sir. In "Strategy for Pensions" the Government have proposed that all employees who leave after the new arrangements come into force and who satisfy the qualifying conditions should be able to obtain a deferred pension in respect of the whole of their pensionable service.

Mr. Kaufman: Is the Minister aware that, taking advantage of technical circumstances following its merger with the District Bank, the National Westminster Bank pocketed £243 in superannuation payments belonging to a constituent of mine? Should not the hon. Gentleman take action to prevent and put right this legalised theft?

Mr. Dean: I know the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I do not think that it would be right for me to comment on it, but I can tell him that under Government proposals there will be much better cover for employees who change their jobs, in terms of the preservation of their pension rights, which will mean not only their own contributions but their employers' contributions as well.

Cottage Hospitals (Closures)

Mr. David Steel: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services whether, with a view to a community-oriented health service, he will now give an assurance that during the period of reconsideration of hospital planning, no more cottage hospitals will be closed.

Sir Keith Joseph: No, Sir. Each case of prospective closure will continue, as now, to be carefully considered and decisions reached in the light of all relevant circumstances.

Mr. Steel: Is the Secretary of State aware that that reply is rather disappointing, that at present there are protests in different parts of the country about specific closures, and that this programme of closures by regional boards contrasts strongly with his own statement last month stressing the social and economic value of cottage hospitals? How long will it be before we have a definite policy pronouncement?

Sir K. Joseph: It will be possibly a few months, but not more, before I am able to make a definitive statement on the character of community hospitals. But whatever that statement may contain, it will still be necessary to close a number of small hospitals, keeping going only those which justify the money concerned, bearing in mind the huge amount of extra money being spent on district general hospitals.

Mr. Boscawen: Would my right hon. Friend agree that there is a certain amount of social cost involved in keeping these smaller hospitals? Would he agree to paying that extra social cost where it is necessary for various reasons in a particular area?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes, I entirely agree with that. They perform a valuable function socially as well as medically. But we still shall not be able to afford to keep all of them.

Dr. Summer skill: Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that in view of the shortage of doctors, particularly for the large hospitals, it would be advisable to consider retaining small hospitals where general practitioners are willing and able to work? Surely this would alleviate the shortage of staff?

Sir K. Joseph: That is one of the factors which has encouraged the Government to change previous policy and to intend to maintain some of the hospitals as community hospitals.

Kidney Transplants

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what conveniently available figures he has of the number of people, in 1971, for whom a kidney transplant was requested by medical authorities, and who were turned down.

Mr. Alison: These are matters of clinical judgment which cannot be accurately assessed by statistics. I understand, however, that the latest figures indicated that some 700 patients on dialysis were likely to be clinically suitable for renal transplantation.

Mr. Dalyell: If the Government are reluctant to amend the Human Tissue Act, will they consider a second-best course of action and institute a system of medical identity cards giving details of blood groups, allergies, and so on? That would be an advantage not only to potential recipients but also to donors who might be badly hurt in an accident.

Mr. Alison: The hon. Member has been kind enough to send he his model idea on the question and we are considering this. We have put in hand an arrangement at the National Tissue Type Reference Laboratory at Bristol precisely to tie up potential donors and recipients who are compatible.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the Minister aware that 99 per cent. of Press reports about the National Health Service concern things that go wrong? Will the Under-Secretary instruct his public information department, therefore, to shout from the housetops about what is being done in this sphere? For example, there are the transplants that are taking place through the Euro bank, matching dialysis patients with those that need new kidneys, and the way in which practically every week a kidney is flown from Stockholm, Bonn or Paris for an operation in one of our hospitals which saves a life. This is the marvellous job that the National Health Service is doing.

Mr. Alison: I am grateful for that helpful contribution to the information

that we have on the subject. About 200 transplant operations are already carried out a year, and the trend, I am happy to say, is upwards.

Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act

Mr. Molloy: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will call for reports from local authorities on the operation of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act in general.

Mr. Alison: As regards Sections 1 and 2, I would refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Alfred Morris) on 22nd February. We already receive annual returns from authorities in respect of Sections 18 and 19. Other Sections are either not my right hon. Friend's responsibility or do not concern local authorities.—[Vol. 831, c. 257. Vol. 830, c. 60.]

Mr. Molloy: I am grateful to the Minister for the reply. Some authorities are doing their very best to implement the Act in the manner and spirit that the whole House want to see. As a result, they have been compelled to increase their rates, but some people are opposed to this humane endeavour. Can the hon. Gentleman persuade the Secretary of State to make a public statement complimenting those local authorities which are doing this and condemning those which do not have the courage to do it.

Mr. Alison: It would be premature to make any judgment before we have the full set of returns on Sections 1 and 2.

Mr. Ashley: The Secretary of State has shown great understanding to the local authorities in their reorganisation of welfare services. This understanding is now being used by some local authorities as an excuse to avoid their responsibilities. Does the Minister agree that the time has come for persuasion buttressed by pressure from the Secretary of State on those local authorities who are neglecting the Act?

Mr. Alison: It would be appropriate to await the full set of returns for the Act, which we have not yet received. When we have evaluated these, the allegations by the hon. Member and his hon. Friends will be substantiated or disproved.

Mr. Lane: Will the Under-Secretary continue to keep this problem in perspective by making it clear whenever he has the chance that many local authorities, including Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, are doing much-appreciated work locally, in difficult circumstances, in implementing the Act.

Mr. Alison: I am grateful for that helpful support. I believe that all local authorities conduct, with a great sense of responsibility, the statutory duties placed upon them by the Act.

Mr. Alfred Morris: On Section 2(l)(h) of the Act, would the Under-Secretary agree that for large numbers of very severely disabled people the telephone is not a luxury but a lifeline and a necessity? Can he say how his discussions with the Post Office are progressing on the remarkably generous and warm-hearted gesture of the Post Office Engineering Union? On the point concerning protection for members of the P.O.E.U. from industrial injuries, can he assure us that this will be fully met at a very early date?

Mr. Alison: In the last debate on the subject, my right hon. Friend and I expressed our great appreciation and warm welcome to the Post Office unions for their initiative, and in every case in which an offer has been made it is being or has been followed up.

Health Centres

Mr. Cockeram: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many health centres are now operational; how many general practitioners practise from these health centres; and how many health centres he expects to be opened in 1972 and 1973, respectively.

Mr. Alison: At the end of February there were 284 health centres in operation in England, with approximately 1,550 general medical practitioners practising from them. I estimate that 80 more centres may be opened during 1972 and a further 90 during 1973.

Mr. Cockeram: Will the Undersecretary accept the thanks of the members of the medical profession and their patients for the great progress that has been made in this programme? Will he consider issuing some publicity to patients outlining the many advantages to be

gained by attending a doctor who is practising from a health centre rather than from his home, under the old arrangements?

Mr. Alison: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support on this subject. The best possible publicity for health centres is derived from the experiences of those who are treated in them.

Mr. Butler: Can my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary confirm that the population criterion for health centres is 7,000? If it is, will he consider lowering this figure, so that those in smaller towns can have the benefit of a health centre on their doorstep?

Mr. Alison: I will look at what my hon. Friend has said, but if a scheme can be shown to be viable loan sanction is invariably given.

Mr. Knox: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is the estimated annual cost of building a health centre; and what was the total expenditure on them in 1969, 1970 and 1971.

Mr. Alison: The cost of building a health centre varies considerably according to the extent of services provided from it. In England during the current financial year the estimated average building cost per health centre approved by my Department has been about £69,000. In 1969–70 the total capital expenditure approved for health centres was £4·8 million, in 1970–71 £5·0 million and in 1971–72, to 29th February. £5·7 million.

Mr. Knox: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress being made, but is it his intention that even faster progress should be made in the next three years, and does he intend to encourage general practitioners to extend the range of services they provide in the health centres?

Mr. Alison: Yes. We expect a continued projection upwards and a steadily increasing number of health centres begun and completed every year.

Mr. Fernyhough: Will the Minister say whether the figures he mentioned of £4·8 million, £5 million and £5·7 million represent a physical increase or an inflationary increase?

Mr. Alison: This is a real increase.

Mr. Will Griffiths: Is it not true that under successive Governments progress in building health centres has been held back by the refusal over many years of general practitioners to participate in health centres and will not this change of view be welcomed by everyone?

Mr. Alison: Yes, there is no doubt that there has been a substantial swing of opinion among the medical and dental profession as to the usefulness and benefits of health centres.

Heating Allowance

Mr. Ashley: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what is his estimate of the number of people eligible to apply for an extra heating allowance; and how many are at present receiving one.

Mr. Dean: In November, 1970, 196,000 special additions for extra heating were in payment. Further figures reflecting the recently improved levels of these additions will be available in the spring. It is not possible to estimate the total numbers who might be eligible, since the eligibility of a long-term claimant depends upon the severity of his need and whether the sum of his special needs, including other things as well as heating, exceeds the long-term addition of 50p a week.

Mr. Ashley: Although the Minister may not be able to make a precise estimate of those eligible would he agree, from the figures that he has given, that there must be a considerable number who qualify but do not receive the allowance? Would he consider paying an automatic heating allowance during the winter to all supplementary pensioners?

Mr. Dean: Special additions are available under the existing arrangements, where there are special needs, but the existing arrangements are being reviewed. All the books of supplementary pensioners are being examined when they come up for renewal to see whether there is an eligibility which is not being taken up.

Dame Irene Ward: Will the Under-secretary bear in mind that this is a most urgent matter and that I hope every effort will be made to deal with it? I am not satisfied that those requiring extra heating are getting it. It would be absolutely

marvellous if some of the Treasury officials were to come up to my part of the world, where I would take them to see cases of need. I am certain that it is the Treasury and not the Department of Health and Social Security which is not co-operating, and I would love to do something to help my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to get on with the job.

Mr. Dean: I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) that the Secretary of State is taking a great personal interest in this, as indeed is the Supplementary Benefits Commission. Arrangements are being looked at at the present moment, but I can add nothing to what I have already said.

Mr. Meacher: Less than 2 per cent. of all old people receive any special help with heating costs, and the vast majority of those who do get only 25p per week when average winter heating costs come to £2 per week or more. It is terribly mean to allow old people to shiver when the Government have given away £1.400 million in tax reliefs to the better-off, and are expected to give away a further £1,000 million in the next Budget. Will he look at the problem again?

Mr. Dean: I am confident that when we have the figures in the spring they will show a substantial increase in the numbers now benefiting from the improved arrangements that the Government introduced last winter.

Mr. O'Malley: How can the Minister be so self-satisfied about the scheme, with all the defects in current circumstances that my hon. Friend has described? Did not the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary promise the House before Christmas that a review would be put in hand urgently? We have had no announcement about it. Does not the hon. Gentleman recognise that, as the delegates from the Lancashire Federation of Trades Unions pointed out to him only this morning, for many pensioners the choice is between adequate heating and adequate food, and that because of the inflation produced by this Government, throughout this winter hundreds of thousands of pensioners have not had enough money for the heating they need?

Mr. Dean: We are certainly not self-satisfied, but we had to start from


scratch, because very little was done by the Administration of which the hon. Gentleman was a member.

Mr. Eadie: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many pensioners applied for additional financial aid for heating as a consequence of increased costs to them because of the miners' strike; and what was the total cost involved in the respective geographical areas.

Mr. Dean: I regret that this information is not available.

Mr. Eadie: Is there a problem of organisation here? The Minister must be aware that during the miners' strike it seemed to be easy to identify pensioners who were suffering because of the additional cost of heating. If it were possible to identify them then, how will the hon. Gentleman identify them now?

Mr. Dean: The information is not available now, partly because during the pressure of the strike it was not possible for our local offices to take down this detailed information. Discovering the additional cost often depends on quarterly bills which the people concerned have not yet received.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Does not my hon. Friend agree that there is something a little unappetising about those who were vociferous in demanding the most inflationary settlement possible for the miners' strike now complaining about the impact of that settlement on pensioners?

Mr. Dean: I agree very much with what my hon. Friend has said, and I had better not be drawn further.

Mr. Bob Brown: I am sure that the Minister will agree that that type of carping will not increase the comfort of pensioners who will be receiving extremely large quarterly accounts as a result of having to employ electric heating instead of solid fuel. Will he give an assurance that pensioners who receive an extra large electricity account as a direct result of using alternative heating during the strike period will be assisted by the Supplementary Benefits Commission?

Mr. Dean: The hon. Gentleman is being unfair to my hon. Friend. The

fact is that there was hardship among pensioners as a result of the strike, and that is why I have given the House an assurance this afternoon that help will be given in cases where higher additional costs have been incurred because of the shortage of normal fuel.

Support Hosiery

Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will allow National Health prescriptions for support stockings to be used in part payment for support tights.

Mr. Alison: No, Sir. The patient should be supplied only with the article which the doctor has prescribed and which he considers clinically suitable

Mrs. Oppenheim: Can my hon. Friend be unaware that most women wear tights these days, that is not a question of vanity or fashion but utility, and that it seems rather unfair that women unfortunate enough to be afflicted with varicose veins should be condemned to wear garments soon to be extinct? As most chemists sell support tights alongside support stockings, and as my suggestion would not cost the National Health Service a penny, will my hon. Friend reconsider his answer?

Mr. Alison: I am advised that tights are liable to slip and therefore are not suitable as substitutes for surgical elastic hosiery when support is needed for the thigh or calf.

Smoking

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what further steps he proposes to take to implement the report of his inter-departmental committee on smoking and health; if he will take into account the report of the Imperial Tobacco Company, information about which he has been sent by the hon. Member for Willesden, West; and if he will make a statement.

Sir K. Joseph: The Government expect shortly to reach conclusions on what further action may be necessary on smoking and health. I will make an announcement then. All relevant information will be taken into account.

Mr. Pavitt: Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the steps that we


took in the House last year have now more or less been finished and have had no appreciable results? Hon. Members who smoke are probably past redemption, but the attack should be upon younger people. Therefore, will the recommendation on the sports events sponsored by cigarette manufacturers—which are aimed at, and attract, large numbers of young people—be one of the first parts of the inter-departmental report to receive his most earnest attention?

Sir K. Joseph: I have undertaken that that will be considered, but we must recognise that we are dealing with a very intractable appetite, and it is not easy to see ways of rapidly making an impression.

Dr. Stuttaford: Will my right hon. Friend do everything in his power to encourage the development of a safer tobacco substitute for use by those who are hopelessly addicted? Will he make representations to his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Treasury to see whether an adjustment in tax might aid this?

Sir K. Joseph: My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will see my hon. Friend's comments. The new committee that the Government set up—the Scientific Liaison Committee, on which Government scientists and industry scientists sit together—is largely concerned with establishing criteria for just the innovation to which my hon. Friend refers.

Dr. Summer skill: Will the right hon. Gentleman cause to be published the tar and nicotine content of every marketed brand of cigarettes and have them printed on the individual packets? Will he consider imposing a statutory level of tar and nicotine content of cigarettes, as was recommended in the report of the Royal College of Physicians?

Sir K. Joseph: All these matters are part of the review that is now going on.

Mr. Fidler: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that some of us who smoke reject the suggestion that we are beyond redemption, or are involved in an incurable habit, while we fully support the steps already taken to draw attention to the hazards involved, and that we repudiate any suggestion of compulsion?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes, but I hope that my hon. Friend will follow up that supplementary question by setting a national example by himself giving up smoking.

Mr. James Hamilton: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept from one who does not smoke that we must note the amount of taxes received by the Treasury from the Imperial Tobacco Company and all other tobacco manufacturers? Will he also accept that the Government, irrespective of their colour, have a responsibility to see that the maximum amount of research is carried out, which means giving financial support to the tobacco companies for that research, to make smoking safer?

Sir K. Joseph: I believe that the companies, the industry, the universities and other laboratories are carrying out all the useful research that makes sense. I only wish that I were hopeful enough of what we can rapidly do to be worried about any large inroads into the revenue from smoking.

Abortion Clinics

Mr. William Price: asked the Secretary of State for Social Services how many abortion clinics have had their licence withdrawn in the past 12 months.

Sir K. Joseph: Four, Sir.

Mr. Price: Is the Minister aware that the decision to close the Langham Street Clinic will be widely welcomed on the ground that he is putting out of business some of the biggest crooks ever to set foot inside the medical profession? Is it not strange that a clinic which claimed a net profit of only £32,000 a year should be on sale for £1½ million? Will the Minister ask the Inland Revenue to investigate what has clearly been a case of massive taxation fiddling?

Sir K. Joseph: I am not at all sure that it is right for the hon. Gentleman to use the privilege of the House to repeat what has appeared in the newspapers, but what appeared in the newspapers must obviously have been read by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider the representations that have been made to him that


no new licences for private clinics should be issued until the Lane Committee has completed its work? If he is unable to go as far as that, will he apply strict and rigorous criteria to the approval of new clinics until that report is to hand?

Sir K. Joseph: I gladly give the assurance asked for in the last part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question.

Mr. Simon Mahon: When is the Lane Committee likely to report?

Sir K. Joseph: During the first half of next year.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: If we must have abortion clinics, would it not be better if they were all brought within the National Health Service?

Sir K. Joseph: That is quite another question.

Mr. David Steel: I fully support the Minister's decision in this case, but will he confirm that the behaviour of this and other clinics which he has closed is out of keeping with the standards in the rest of the private sector which are fully approved by his Department?

Sir K. Joseph: Obviously the fact that I picked out two clinics and did not renew their licences reflects the broadly satisfactory conditions in the others.

STUDENT (DEPENDANTS' GRANTS)

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: asked the Prime Minister whether he is satisfied with the co-ordination between the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Education and Science in relation to deciding whether the payment of educational grants or supplementary benefit is the appropriate payment for the families of students attending full time courses in technical colleges.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): Yes, Sir. Dependants' grants in such cases are the responsibility of local education authorities, who are doubtless aware of the limited access to supplementary benefit permitted to students. Authorities may not consider that a payment from public funds for a student's family is appropriate in every case.

Mr. Mitchell: Is the Prime Minister aware that married students with families

attending full-time courses at technical colleges face particular difficulties because the Department of Education and Science, the local education authorities and the Department of Health and Social Security all disclaim responsibility for maintaining the wife and children? Will he initiate discussion between those three bodies in an attempt to resolve the problem?

The Prime Minister: This is a problem primarily for the local education authorities because they are responsible for the size of the grant that is made to any student. As I said in my original reply, they can be made aware of the student's position and consider whether or not it is appropriate that the grant made to him should be sufficient to maintain his wife and family. I do not think that there is any question of a division of responsibilities between the Departments. The responsibility is very clear.

Mr. Pardoe: Is the Prime Minister aware, however, that not only married students fall foul of the discrepancy between the Departments, and that a small number of students under 18 taking vocational courses tend to fall between the provisions of the local education authorities and the Supplementary Benefits Commission? Will he look at this to see that those who want to have vocational training are encouraged and enabled to do so?

The Prime Minister: I am prepared to inquire whether there is a gap such as the hon. Gentleman suggests. I am advised that local education authorities have responsibility for making grants of this kind to those who have left school and are taking courses in colleges of one kind or another. The problem that the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. R. C. Mitchell) raised was rather different from the one that the hon. Gentleman has in mind. The case of the particular student with which he is concerned has been dealt with.

Mr. James Hamilton: Is the Prime Minister aware that information has been sent to me that students aged between 17 and 18 who spend more than three days at a technical college are deprived of supplementary benefit, which makes it difficult for them to further their education? This is a serious imposition. Will


the Prime Minister do something about it?

The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman will be kind enough to let me have the information that he has been sent I will have it examined. When a student is not actually at college he comes under the normal regulations and is eligible for supplementary benefit in the normal way if he complies with the requirements. I will gladly examine any evidence on this problem which the hon. Gentleman has.

THIRSK

Mr. Skinner: asked the Prime Minister if he will make an official visit to Thirsk, Yorkshire.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Prime Minister aware that he should go to Thirsk and put a stop to the Tories using offensive words like "traitor" against the Father of the House? Since it is rumoured that the Prime Minister is looking for a new constituency, why does not he apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and arrange a contest so that we can get the full-hearted consent of the people of Thirsk? I am sure that the usual channels will help.

The Prime Minister: I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton) requires the assistance of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) in dealing with this problem.

Sir Robin Turton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this projected by-election is being frustrated by the refusal of the constituency Labour Party to put country before party by allowing a by-election to take place on the single issue of the Common Market? Is he also aware that, apart from these little local difficulties, he will always be welcome in the Thirsk and Malton division, particularly since some of the ancestors of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition used to live in that constituency?

The Prime Minister: I am not sure whether the welcome given to me by my right hon. Friend is somewhat qualified by the last part of his supplementary

question, but I am glad to know that he places no responsibility for these matters on us.

NORTH SEA OIL

Mr. Douglas: asked the Prime Minister if the public speech made by the Secretary of State for Scotland on Friday 25th February, 1972, at Aviemore, with respect to companies searching in the North Sea for oil, represents Government policy.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. My right hon. Friend reaffirmed the Government's full support for oil exploration and development in the North Sea, and the need to take full advantage of Scottish skills and resources.

Mr. Douglas: Would the right hon. Gentleman accept that we must go a little further in attempting to get the maximum benefit from this natural resource of Scotland? Would he concede that we should exert pressure on the oil companies to ensure that not a pint of crude oil which can be refined in Scotland or in other parts of the United Kingdom finds itself exported without its being refined? Secondly, will he draw his right hon. Friend's attention to the proposals made by the Industrial Development Authority, based partly on the licence fees and royalties from the oil companies, and will he see what can be done by his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to facilitate that type of regional development?

The Prime Minister: Judging from the reports that I have read, the conference was valuable, and we will study the lessons to be drawn from it. The hon. Gentleman has raised the important question of exporting oil, and this will be a matter for discussion with the oil companies. As he knows, the B.P. project provides that a large amount of the oil should be refined at Grangemouth; and Shell proposes to land oil at Teesport in the North-East. It is thus already planned that much of the oil from the North Sea will be refined in the United Kingdom. A different problem arises over finance, and raises the question whether we should try to isolate finance for different parts of the United Kingdom. When in the past this issue has been examined, it has been thought that


to try to do this would not be of advantage to Scotland and areas like it.

Mr. Farr: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in some quarters it is felt that the disposal of some of our rights in respect of North Sea oil blocks could have been made on more beneficial terms? Will he look into this matter to see that the nation benefits fully from our wonderful potential.

The Prime Minister: The present Government changed the arrangements under which licences were granted. We were criticised for our action at the time, but it has proved to be more beneficial to the country as a whole. Later this week there will be an announcement about further awards of licences, and perhaps my hon. Friend will await that event.

Mr. Steel: Would the Prime Minister accept that there is a growing consensus in Scotland in favour of the idea of some form of Scottish development corporation, financed in part by revenues from oil finds, and does the right hon. Gentleman recall that at Aviemore the Secretary of State for Scotland seemed to give his blessing to this idea? Could we have a definite Government pronouncement on this matter?

The Prime Minister: I have already told the House, following my discussions with the Scottish Council, that we will examine this proposal. This is what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was indicating, and this is what is taking place.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: With regard to the oil that is alleged to be in other parts of the North Sea, particularly on the West Coast, is it not this matter all the more important when one considers the possibilities of refining at other sites, apart from use of the refinery at Grangemouth? Is he further aware that we are anxious about the fact that the Regional Development Corporation Bill was given a Second Reading but has not been further proceeded with? Does this mean that we shall soon have put before us radical regional policy proposals? If so, could it be connected with proposals relating to oil revenues?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Member is referring to a Private Member's Bill. I have already said that we have been undertaking a complete review of

regional development policy, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will await the announcement to which I have referred. On the point about refinery capacity, I agree on the importance of the exploration around the North and West of Scotland, but it must be a matter for the commercial judgment of the companies as to where they consider oil should be refined, whether it be at Grangemouth or at refineries they wish to set up elsewhere.

PRIME MINISTER (BROADCAST)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of the text of his ministerial broadcast of Sunday, 27th February.

Mr. Carter: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a transcript of his ministerial broadcast made on 27th February.

Mr. William Price: asked the Prime Minister whether he will place in the Library a transcript of his ministerial broadcast on 27th February.

Mr. John Fraser: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of the text of his ministerial broadcast of 27th February. 1972.

Mr. Strang: asked the Prime Minister if he will place a copy of the text of his ministerial broadcast on Sunday, 27th February, 1972, in the Library.

The Prime Minister: As I indicated in the reply I gave last Friday to a Question from my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), I did so on 28th February.—[Vol. 832, c. 403.]

Mr. Dalyell: In that broadcast the other night the Prime Minister told the country that the fight against rising prices must be fought with no holds barred. What in concrete terms does "no holds barred" mean?

The Prime Minister: It means taking the measures that we have been taking—for example, by bringing about the biggest reduction of purchase tax since the war, by halving S.E.T., and by the specific produce reductions which were announced by my right hon. Friend the


Minister of Agriculture last week. That is real action to keep down prices.

Mr. Carter: In that broadcast the Prime Minister equated a defeat for the Government with a defeat for the country. Is he not aware that that is arrogant nonsense, and that at present a defeat for the Government on a whole range of contentious issues before Parliament would be regarded as a victory for the country?

The Prime Minister: What my speech said was that if the country wants to keep down prices, as it does—and presumably the Opposition agree with that desire—the means to do it is to keep wage claims from being excessive; in other words, not to have increased wages without increased productivity. That policy will keep prices where they are, and if that policy is defeated it will be a defeat for the country's wishes. That still remains the case.

Mr. William Price: Is the Prime Minister prepared to accept the blame for anything?

The Prime Minister: I have never at any time hesitated to accept responsibility for what I have to do and for what the Government as a whole have done. I am sure that in the various decisions I have taken during my time in Parliament the House has respected the fact that I have done what I believe to be right.

Mr. J. Selwyn Gummer: Will my right hon. Friend say whether, since his broadcast, he has received from the Leader of the Opposition a list of those groups of workers who voluntarily wish to put in decreased wage demands to pay for any special cases that arise?

The Prime Minister: In all fairness, I do not believe that it lies within the power of the Opposition to do such a thing. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was unable to do so when he was Prime Minister, and certainly cannot take such action now that he is Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. John Fraser: In that broadcast the Prime Minister spoke about higher prices leading to higher wages without anybody being better off. Why did he not tell the country that in steamrolling through the Housing Finance Bill he will

double the rents of council tenants by 1975 and will treble the rents of a million statutory tenants? Why did he not say that his policy would have such an effect on wages, prices and the general cost of living?

The Prime Minister: I did not tell the country that because it is not true. What I have told the country, and what the House knows perfectly well, is what the rent rebate system will mean to those in private tenancies—[Hon. Members: "Oh!"] I do not see why the Opposition should be so critical of help being given to lower-paid workers who occupy private tenancies in obtaining rent rebates. These policies will help the lower-paid, and therefore they should be supported.

Mr. Onslow: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there was a particular welcome for his comments in the broadcast about the current challenge to democratic authority inside and outside Parliament? In view of recent events in this Chamber, will he ask his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to make time available for somebody to say where the Labour Party stands on this issue?

The Prime Minister: I do not want to enter into current controversies on happenings in this House. I would only say that last night the House took a decision, and the country will be able from that to judge the views of all those who took part in that matter. In regard to my telecast, I believe that the country as a whole has expressed anxiety about some aspects of picketing during the recent miners' strike. It was absolutely right that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General last Friday should have made the situation quite clear. [Interruption.] If hon. Gentlemen below the gangway are not anxious about the abuse of picketing, then in the interests of their own unions they ought to be.

Mr. Spriggs: Is the Prime Minister aware that the Second Church Commissioner told us yesterday that the reason for prices increasing by 100 per cent. was the reduced value of money? Does the Prime Minister support that point of view?

The Prime Minister: I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that point. I was here yesterday and heard the Question that he put to my hon.


Friend the Second Church Commissioner. I recognise fully what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertford shire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) described as the increase in the cost of dying.

Mr. Lane: If my right hon. Friend is considering television Press conferences, in addition to broadcast speeches and Press briefings, will he bear in mind that many people will welcome this as an extra channel of communication with the public?

The Prime Minister: There is nothing new about it. I did this last July when we were discussing the European question as part of the great debate in which the nation was taking part at that time—[An Hon. Member: "What is the latest verdict?"] As the hon. Gentleman knows, I never refer to public opinion polls. It is therefore that which prevents me pointing out that today's Gallup Poll shows that more than 50 per cent. of the people want our membership of the Communities to go ahead.

Mr. Orme: Is the Prime Minister aware, in regard to wages, which was one of the major themes of his broadcast, that he has not made out the case either to this House or to the nation that high wages are the cause of the difficulties and problems facing the country? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, on the contrary, in many industries it is low wages which are the problem? What we want is high wages and low unit costs. The attitude of the right hon. Gentleman's Government over the miners' strike has made it difficult for the country. Why does not the Prime Minister admit it?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman accuses me of not having made out the case. I forebear to refer to this afternoon's public opinion poll, which shows that two out of three people believe that the Government are right to try to prevent excessive wage increases. The case will never be made out to the satisfaction of the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme). However, the last part of his supplementary question is the key to everything. One wants high wages with high productivity. Therefore, what is important is the speed at which one

moves towards that. If wages outpace productivity, one cannot have a healthy and sound economy. I am with the hon. Gentleman in wanting to see a move towards high wages with greater productivity. If he will back an economic policy which says "Very well. Let us improve the lot of the lower-paid wage earner, but we recognise that we cannot at the same time keep all the differentials which have existed in the past", that will begin to make sense—but I have never known the hon. Gentleman be prepared to do that.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Carter.

LIMBLESS CHILDREN (ATTENDANCE ALLOWANCE)

Mr. Greville Janner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that Question No. 25, which concerns the child with no legs and only one arm whose parents were refused an attendance allowance, was not reached, and in view of the strong feeling on all sides of the House—

Mr. Speaker: This does not sound like a point of order.

Mr. Greville Janner: If it is not, may I respectfully give notice, Mr. Speaker, that I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment?

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Crouch: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on the style and manner of Questions to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, a matter to which I have drawn your attention before? We have had four almost identical Questions today requesting answers from my right hon. Friend about his broadcast on 27th February. I should have thought that this House would have been helped if the matter had been confined to one Question, with some supplementary questions to follow.
Secondly, we are seeing again the tendency to ask my right hon. Friend to visit a number of places in the country


with a view to promoting supplementary questions to my right hon. Friend which are quite unrelated. I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, as to whether we can avoid this type of Question in the future.

Mr. Speaker: I believe that I dealt with the form in which Questions are put down to the Prime Minister last Thursday. This is much more a matter for the Committee which is now considering Questions. It is not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. William Hamilton: On the same point, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that when the Prime Minister was answering Question No. Q4 he was presuming, with the permission of the House, to answer further Questions on the same subject. The right hon. Gentleman specifically excluded Question No. Q25, standing in my name, although it was tabled on the same day and is couched in identical terms. This is extremely unsatisfactory, in view of the fact that I had a friendly supplementary question to ask the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Speaker: I think that even the Prime Minister would suspect some people with friendly supplementary questions However, that is not a matter for me.

BILL PRESENTED

PROTECTION OF OTTERS (No. 2)

Mr. Ray Carter, supported by Mr. Joe Ashton, Mr. Burden, Mr. Sydney Chapman, Mr. Michael English, Mr. Fred Evans, Mr. Peter Hardy, Mr. Ronald King Murray, Mr. Ernle Money, Mr. William Price, Mr. Caerwyn Roderick, and Mr. Woodhouse presented a Bill to provide for the protection of otters: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday next and to be printed. [Bill 99.]

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (UNIT PRICING)

3.35 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Weights and Measures Act 1963 to give power to the Secretary of State to require by order made under section 21 of that Act that goods should be marked with the price per unit of measure.
This is a very short Bill, but I suggest that it is a very important one. The aim is simple. It is to help the shopper, and especially the housewife. No manufacturer or retailer who gives value for money need fear its provision or its consequences. I hope that the Government will give it their blessing and that the House will give it a speedy passage, or, even better, that it will be incorporated in the much-needed shoppers' charter which will give a fair and square deal to all consumers.
At a time when the curse of inflation is felt in every home, one of the fundamental aims of the Legislature should be to take all necessary steps to discourage and guard against unjustified price rises and to take any necessary Measures to enable the shopper to judge the true value, cost and content of his purchases.
In this country we have the traditional protection against deception of standard quantities, and many pre-packed foods have been required to be sold in standard quantities for some 50 years. This is the method which makes it easier for shoppers to make proper comparisons where various brands have many similarities, and standard quantities should be our aim wherever possible. But not all goods are suitable for packaging in this manner. There are technical difficulties in packaging to specified weights, especially where the products are packed by numbers or by volume.
Therefore, as an alternative to the standard quantity concept, consumer organisations here, on the Continent and across the Atlantic have for some time advocated unit pricing. There is now on the Statute Book in Germany a law from which perhaps I might quote a brief passage:
Whosoever keeps filled packages for sale to the consumer must indicate on the package or on a price ticket on or beside the


filled package, clearly visible and distinctly readable the price he asks for 1 kilo or I litre (basic price) of the product.
In the United States of America and Europe there has been a lot of voluntary development along these lines. Even here the concept is familiar to those who shop in supermarkets and buy cheese or meat in pre-packaged quantities.
There are an awful lot of anomalies which need clearing up. At the risk of being accused of bringing offensive weapons into the Chamber, I have some samples with me. Here is a pack which looks like half a pound of biscuits. In fact, it is seven ounces, not half a pound. There is no indication on the packet clearly visible as to what the proper weight is, and it is difficult for a housewife shopping in a hurry to compare the value of this packet with the value of a packet on the next shelf. I have other examples. Here are two packets of instant mashed potato. It might seem that the larger packet is the better value. This is not so. The larger packet works out at 8p per pound, whereas the smaller packet works out at 4½p. Surely manufacturers would not suffer and competition would be sharpened if they had to give the unit price on such packets.
This applies not just to foodstuffs. Perhaps detergents are the examples which spring most readily to mind. It applies also to those things which in the current vulgarism are referred to as "toiletries"—toothpaste, after-shave lotions, perfumes of all sorts. I have four tubes of toothpaste here, Mr. Speaker; perhaps you would accept one afterwards with my compliments. One is marked 50½ millimeters, another 80 grammes, a third 83 grammes and the fourth 50½ cc. To the shopper, they are identical in size but, of course, they are not identical in content. The shopper should know, so that he or she can make a proper choice, what these packets contain.
What I am seeking to do is to make sure that all goods which are not sold in

standard quantities have a uniform price on the packet. This price should be related to weight or volume. With the sort of differences we saw with the toothpaste, there should be a measurement common to all.
The Bill is not designed to hit the small shopkeeper by giving him a lot of extra work. The main obligation should lie with the manufacturer to put the recommended unit price on his product if he is not selling it in a standard quantity with a recommended retail price. This should help all manufacturers who provide good value for money—and many do—and it should stimulate genuine competition. It should, above all, be a much-needed death blow to those spurious "special offers" which delude so many housewives.
The Weights and Measures Act which I seek to amend is now 10 years old, and today's shopping conditions are vastly different. We should recognise this fact in the House. I therefore very much hope that the House will give me leave to introduce the Bill and that the Government will either incorporate it in major legislation or assist its passage this Session.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Cormack, Mr. Finsberg, Mr. Money, Mr. Michael Cocks, Mr. Luce, Mr. Janner. Miss Fookes, Mr. Peter Archer, Mrs. Oppenheim, Mr. Arthur Davidson, Mr. Hooson and Sir Bernard Braine.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
(UNIT PRICING)

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Weights and Measures Act 1963 to give power to the Secretary of State to require by order made under section 21 of that Act that goods should be marked with the price per unit of measure; and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday, 28th April, and to be printed. [Bill 100.]

Orders of the Day — EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES BILL

Considered in Committee [Progress, 8th March.]

[Sir ROBERT GRANT-FERRIS in the Chair]

3.45 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: On a point of order, Sir Robert—

The Chairman: Order. Perhaps I could make my own "point of order" first. I think that might be helpful.
I should like to announce one change in the list of selected Amendments which I issued this morning. As a result of representations received, I have decided that Amendments Nos. 175 and 177 should be discussed with Amendment No. 3 and not with Amendment No. 28 on the list as published. The other point which I should mention now, in case it is raised, is that I am prepared to allow a separate Division on Amendment No. 175 and on sub-Amendment (a) to Amendment No. 23, a matter in which the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton) was interested.

Mr. Foot: First, Sir Robert, I thank you for the consideration which you have given to the representations which we made for the inclusion of Amendments Nos. 175 and 177 with Amendment No. 3, rather than the original selection. But may I renew the representations which some of my hon. Friends have made? On some of the latter selections, which are not likely to affect the immediate discussions, I should be grateful if you could give the same consideration as you have given to the previous ones.
For example, we should prefer it if Amendments Nos. 179 and 180 were taken with No. 150. This might be a more convenient way of embracing the debates. Also, it seems strange to us that Amendment No. 161, referring to Clause 2, should be included with Amendment No. 40and its associated group of Amendments. We would therefore ask you to consider that as well.
The next question that I wish to raise with you is whether you would give fresh consideration to some of the matters which we have put on the Order Paper about separate votes. Although we fully

understand why you have embraced these questions in the same debates—for example, in the immediate debate which we are to have on Amendment No. 127—the subject matter of Amendments Nos. 178 and 72 is sufficiently different to require a separate vote. If that were to be denied, it would mean that the Committee could not express its view on some of those questions.
We also feel most strongly that, although it is right to incorporate the debates on Amendments Nos. 3, 175 and 177 together, Nos. 175 and 177 particularly should be separate subjects for Division, because No. 175 refers to the whole discussion that we have had on the so-called ad hoc committee and No. 177 raises a quite separate point.
Therefore, in general, we should like to know whether you would look afresh, Sir Robert, at the question of separate votes on all these matters, particularly because some of these Amendments come from different sides of the Committee and raise different aspects of these matters. We hope that you will consider the matter in that respect.
The third matter that the Committee should consider—this is not immediately a matter for you to rule upon, Sir Robert, but I think that this is the proper occasion to raise it—is that the more that we have considered this Clause—no one who has participated in the debate could deny that the discussion on Clause 1 has embraced subjects which perhaps were not envisaged when the discussions started—the more we think it desirable that Amendments to the Schedule, or at any rate to the first Part of the Schedule, should be taken with Clause 1.
We think that the Committee will be in considerable difficulties if this is not permitted. I understand that this would require a Motion from the Government to ensure that the discussion on the Schedule should take place at the same time as the discussion on Clause 1, and that that should come at that appropriate stage in our proceedings.
I therefore hope, Sir Robert, that we may ask, through you, that the Government should consider this matter and perhaps make a statement to the Committee at a convenient time—either when we start on the next Amendment or possibly at the begining of our proceedings tomorrow.
The earlier that the Government could give some indication of their view on this subject, the better it would be for the Committee, since it would mean that we could then consider how we are to discuss some of the very important questions which arise on the Schedule—particularly paragraph 7 in Part I, which raises extensive matters in a manner which has never been incorporated in any Bill ever presented to the House before.
For all those reasons I hope that the Government will, perhaps on a point of order, give some indication of their view or at any rate some indication of when they can state their views on the general possibilities.

The Chairman: Answering the hon. Gentleman as best I can, the last point, as he said, is not primarily a subject for me. It is for the Government to make up their minds how they wish to tackle the question of the Schedules in connection with the Clauses.
On the question of Divisions, I think the hon. Member said that Amendments Nos. 178 and 72 were in one group and Nos. 175 and 177 in another. I am at this stage prepared to allow him at any rate one Division on each of the two groups in addition to the first of the group. I mean a Division on Amendment No. 172, if wanted, and again on Amendment No. 3, if wanted. I shall also allow a Division on either No. 8 or No. 72 and on No. 175 or No. 177 if wanted. I do not consider that absolutely final—I should like a little more time to consider this—but I concede that to the hon. Member at this stage.
On the other questions that the hon. Member raised, the subject is being actively considered by myself and my advisers and I hope to give him an answer in the very near future.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: On a point of order, Sir Robert. I am sure the Committee will be greatly helped by your indication that you would be willing to permit a Division on either Amendment No. 178 or Amendment No. 72. Although it is obviously a matter for the hon. Members who put their names to the Amendments, I would suggest that if there is a choice a Division on Amendment 178 might be more appropriate.
Secondly, I hope you will agree, Sir Robert—and I take it from your answer to the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) that this would be your practice—to consider these applications for separate Divisions without prejudce as we come to them, since the advisability or otherwise of seeking a separate Division may be altered as the Committee proceeds with its study of the previous Amendments and also because it is very difficult—and this is no criticism of you, Sir Robert—when an alteration is made in the arrangement of the Amendments which are to be discussed to come to a decision there and then how it might be most advantageous in the new circumstances to take them.
I want to add only one point, therefore, on your initial communication to the Committee. While respectfully welcoming your decision that sub-Amendment (a), in the name of my hon. and right hon. Friends, to Amendment No. 23 might be taken separately, I ask you whether, if that Amendment to an Amendment were to appear on the Notice Paper in the form of a separate Amendment, you would be willing for it to be treated in the same way as a separate Amendment, since this would, I imagine, be convenient to both sides of the Committee.
Finally, realising, as you said, Sir Robert, that the question of the order in which the first Schedule and perhaps subsequent Schedules are to be taken is not for the Chair, might I, since I first raised this question in the Committee with one of your deputies in the Chair, reinforce the plea of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale and say that on the previous occasion when I raised it I may have misunderstood the signal conveyed to me by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House but it was a signal such as to give me hope that, as in the case of many other Bills, the Government will in this respect consider what I think is the undoubted convenience of the Committee by bringing the Schedules in after the Clauses to which they refer?

The Chairman: The right hon. Gentleman will understand that his last point is not really a point for me. As regards the two other points that he raised, I had better say definitely that I ought to see what happens on the Notice Paper rather than give a ruling about the sub-Amendment being put down as a separate


Amendment. I would rather not commit myself at this stage. As regards anything that might happen about Divisions and the desire of hon. Members to divide on certain Amendments, I quite understand that the arrival of other Amendments which it was necessary to group with an Amendment might alter the impetus which one might want to give to that Amendment, and might lead to a change to another. Those things can, I am sure, be arranged in a reasonable way, as we proceed.

Sir Derek Walker-Smith: I should like to raise one further matter which was not adverted to by the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), although the two Amendments to which I refer stand in his name. They are Amendments Nos. 29 and 31, grouped together for the purposes of discussion. As you will appreciate, Sir Robert, they raise entirely different points—indeed, in the legitimate sense of parliamentary business they are contradictory to some extent, and some of us who attach considerable importance to Amendment No. 31 would wish to have that Amendment the subject of a separate Division, if that were thought appropriate by yourself, Sir. May I perhaps implant that thought in your mind and respectfully invite your consideration of it, apologising if in so doing I have run in any way contrary to the intentions of those who tabled the Amendments? That seems to be the logic of the position.

The Chairman: I would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to leave that to me for the time being. Obviously, I cannot really allow a Division on every single Amendment. I must draw the line somewhere. But I want to help the Committee as much as I can, and I am sure we shall proceed in a very happy and congenial manner.

Mr. Douglas Jay: I reinforce what has been said by hon. Members on both sides of the House in the matter of Divisions and invite you, Sir Robert, to look as favourably as possible on the request for separate Divisions on the Amendments before us. I recognise that it is for the convenience of the Committee at times to group Amendments together, because Amendments cover partly the same subject matter and

partly other subject matter; but when we come to Divisions, the consequences of a vote or a decision are precise and, clearly, differ from one division to another. I would have thought, therefore, that this should be taken into account where a considerable section of the Committee wishes to have a Division. Whatever the result of the Division may be, there really are very strong grounds for permitting the Division to take place in those circumstances.

The Chairman: Those are questions which I must, of course, take into account, and I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to leave it to my good judgment to decide as I think best.

Mr. Eric Deakins: On the grouping of Amendments, Sir Robert, I would ask with great respect, that when you are considering this matter you might consider the group of Amendments with No. 40, which at the moment stands last on the Notice Paper. I am particularly concerned about No. 161.

The Chairman: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman does not realise that I have dealt with that very point.

Clause 1

SHORT TITLE AND INTERPRETATION

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Michael English: I beg to move Amendment No. 127, in page 2, line 11, leave out from beginning to 'but' in line 14, and insert:
'If a treaty is one of the Community Treaties as herein defined Her Majesty by Order in Council may declare that it shall be included in Schedule 1 to this Act'.

The Chairman: With this Amendment the Committee may also discuss Amendment No. 178, in line 11 after 'Council', insert:
'subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament'.
and Amendment No. 72, in line 12, after 'is', insert 'or is'.

Mr. English: The principal difference between the Amendment and the actual text of the Bill is that the text says that
If Her Majesty by Order in Council declares that a treaty specified in the Order


is to be regarded as one of the Community treaties…the order shall be conclusive
that that is so.
The Amendment does not make it conclusive. It states that if it is a Community treaty it can be included for evidential purposes in Schedule 1. That is a procedure similar to that used in the House of Commons Disqualification Act, where we keep adding to the Schedule any office which debars a Member from sitting in the House. It is not merely a technical Amendment; it has a considerable point behind it.
The point is that we are becoming bemused by the idea that there are only two views on British entry into the Community. There is the view loosely described as pro- and the view loosely described as anti- (the pro-Marketeers and the anti-Marketeers) and we are beginning to believe that the whole community is divided into these two views. However, I submit that there are at least three possible views on British entry into the Community, because the pro-Marketeers themselves are divided between what I should loosely term those who believe in democracy and those who do not. For practical purposes, I call them the democrats and the authoritarians. This division of view applies not only in this country, but in Europe.
The extreme poles are possibly the French, at the one end, who have tended, on all questions, to take a view which enhances the rights of the Executive in the Community and diminishes the rights, for example, of the Assembly or the possibility of the European Assembly ever being elected.
At the opposite pole we have perhaps the Dutch or the Germans. The Germans, for example, when they ratified the European Community treaties, incorporated several procedures designed to ensure that the Bundesrat and the Bundestag, the two Chambers of the German Legislature, had a considerable measure of control over their Executive and what it was doing in the Council of Ministers. They made sure, for example, that there was an observer from one of their Houses present at the Council of Ministers, and they also required the Ministers present at the Council to report on their discussions to the Bundestag or the Bundesrat.
Why is it that whenever they have been offered a choice between these two views the Government have always taken the more authoritarian approach? There is no reason why one cannot be a pro-Marketeer and a democrat.
You, Sir Robert, by your ruling stating that we cannot put down Amendments which vary the terms of the Treaty—I am not criticising that ruling; we have dealt with that issue—made it clear, strangely enough, that the Amendments which are now down do not vary the treaty. I do not think that any right hon. or hon. Member can honestly say that if my Amendment were carried it would prevent the United Kingdom going into Europe. It would do certain things, but it would not do that. There may be other Amendments on the Notice Paper which would. I am not saying that I am so virtuous that I would never move an Amendment which might wreck the possibility of British entry. However, I submit that this Amendment does not do that.
In order to ascertain what it does we must consider what Clause 1(3) means. I find it extremely difficult to understand why it is there at all. We have discussed at some length—I will not go over the points again—that, for example, there are the three categories of treaty involved. The first is the pre-22nd January treaty, which does not need approval by this House if incorporated by an Order in Council.
Why it is there? Surely the Solicitor-General and his staff of Treasury draftsmen did not put it in because of the possibility of slipshod drafting in the most important Bill ever to come before the House of Commons. In effect, they are saying of one type of treaty, "We may have forgotten a treaty and we want the opportunity to put it in later." But 22nd January, 1972, has long since passed. If we do not know now to what treaties the Government are assenting, if the Government themselves do not know to what treaties we are assenting, the outlook for this country is extremely strange. There are many things about which the Government do not know what they are doing, but this would appear to be a case where they are admitting to Parliament that they are not sure whether they have included every treaty and, because they are not sure of what they are doing, they want a


provision to put it right afterwards, if necessary.
There is then the second category of the post-22nd January treaty to which the United Kingdom is a party. Why is that there? We have already discussed this issue. I will not repeat it, but it seems clear that the provision whereby that type of treaty can be approved by an Order in Council and then by the House of Commons and the House of Lords is solely designed to limit Parliament's rights. Instead of a treaty being approved by an Act, as this one is now being approved, it will be reduced from the whole of the procedure through which we are now going to a single Resolution of the House. Presumably it is there to limit our rights.
The third category is the treaty signed by the Community itself. This is the one which I find most puzzling and to which the Amendment is primarily directed. The only reason that I can see for subsection (3), in relation to treaties to which the Community alone is a party, seems to be to stop the courts considering whether they are acting within the powers of the Community. I do not see why this is so.
Clause 3, to which we shall come later, tells the courts to operate under Community law and to take notice of the Official Journal of the Community. It states that the courts are to cease making decisions in accordance with the law of England or Scotland, as the case may be, but that they are to make their decisions in the light of the decisions of the European Court and of Community law. This is obviously necessary if we wish to go into a Community of this character.
It also tells the courts that, as a matter of evidence, they are to take judicial notice, in the technical sense, of the Official Journal of the Communities in which decisions of the Communities—for example, the Council of Ministers—are published. The law of the Communities, so far as it is enacted law, is published in the Official Journal, and the courts are told to take notice of it.
Since the courts are told to take notice of the law of the Communities in Clause 3, why in Clause 1 do we have another provision, supposedly evidential, for an Order in Council of which the courts will also have to take notice? There

seems to be either a duplication or some intent behind it which is more than merely evidential. I suggest—I hope that the Solicitors-General can prove me wrong—that the only possible reason for this provision is to cover acts of the Community which may not be in the Official Journal.
I will give one example. I have repeatedly asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Solicitor-General and the Leader of the House for the publication of all decisions of the Council of Ministers which are to be incorporated into our law. One decision which is not published—which I have found only in a French text, not in any official text of the Community—which I believe is a text of the Council of Europe and not of the European Communities, concerns the rules of procedure of the Council. It is not just a technical set of rules of procedure. It is only in the rules of procedure—not in the Treaty of Rome, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Luxembourg or any of the other treaties in the 10 volume which we have discussed at such length—that, by decision of the Council of Ministers, it is stated to meet in secret.
For the first time since the 18th century we are providing ourselves with a Legislature which, in part, meet technically in secret, and we are doing it in a strange way, for the decision that does it is, in fact, secret. It is a Community decision. It will be, presumably, part of the law of the Community and, therefore, of the law of Britain. But the situation is rather worse than this, and I am considerably worried in case hon. and learned Gentlemen on the Front Bench do not realise that we are going into a quite different system of law. On this point I was just discussing, for example, the Treaty of Rome says that the Council of Ministers
shall lay down its rules of procedure.
In actual fact, I think the reason the Government do not want to publish those rules is that technically the Council never has. It has made some provisional rules of procedure, from which I was quoting. The Council is authorised by the Treaty of Rome to arrive at its rules of procedure by a majority decision—by an ordinary majority, not a qualified majority, but the ordinary sort of


majority which is appropriate for rules of procedure. In fact, the relevant article of those rules says it shall meet in secret unless its members unanimously decide otherwise. So if, as might well be the case, five out of the present six European States or nine out of the future ten all wanted to meet in public and one State did not, we should still be left with this 18th-century-type Legislature arriving at secret decisions in private.
In this country the procedure in case of a wrong act by the Legislature or the Executive is perfectly simple. The individual proceeds to the courts and there seeks an injunction to prevent a body acting wrongly, or seeks a declaration as to what that body ought to be doing. But here we are incorporating this different system of law—a situation that we have not had since about 1540 in this country. in a legal sense we are reversing the Reformation; we are putting people in the situation that many people were in in the early 16th century of having to decide ultimately whether they should obey one of two possible systems of law both of which still applied in the United Kingdom.
We are talking of a very different system of law, in which hon. and learned Gentlemen in this House, with the possible exception of my hon. and learned Friend on the Front Bench, are not qualified. It is the Roman law system. Because we can say in Britain that an organisation cannot exceed its powers, cannot act ultra vires, and because the two words happen to be Latin, we should not presume that to be a principle of Roman law. It is not. It is a principle that has appeared in Britain, the United States and other places which have systems of English law. The basic background of Roman law is that of a series of authoritarian empires in which the State institution—in this case the Communities—could enforce its rights against individuals. But it did not necessarily follow that individuals could enforce their rights against it. This is a very different system of law, which I am beginning to suspect that in some respects hon. and learned Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite have not totally understood.
Look at what is said in this Clause: that if the Government say so a treaty becomes one of the Community treaties and, therefore, by this Bill, part of the

law of Britain. Then, in the next subsection, we define a treaty not in the sense in which that term has hitherto been used in Britain but much more in the sense in which it is used in international law.
The Solicitor-General quoted on this question of treaties from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. I think he might have referred to the fact that the United Kingdom put down several reservations to that convention when it was ratified. This is a rather interesting point since the hon. and learned Gentleman was quoting from it in relation to reservations on treaties. Also, I notice that in November, 1971, that convention was still not in force, and I think he might have told people that as well. I accept that the Solicitor-General is entitled to look where he will for evidence of what international law on treaties is; I merely think that he should have pointed out that he was quoting from something that until quite recently, at least, was not in force and to which the United Kingdom had attached several reservations.
4.15 p.m.
Let us have a look at this because this is what it would appear that subsection (3) of the Bill is trying to incorporate into our law. If we look, for example, at Article 10 of the Vienna Convention we find the interesting statement that
The text of a treaty is established as authentic and definitive:
(a) by such procedure as may be provided for in the text or
—and this is the important point—
agreed upon by the States participating m its drawing up".
It could simply be, for example, a couple of Heads of State meeting—and I say "Heads of State" advisedly, because if we look at Article 7 of the convention which the Solicitor-General regarded as authoritative, it says of the people who have the power to commit a State to a treaty:
In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State:
(a) Heads of State, Heads of Government and Ministers for Foreign Affairs, for the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty".
So a secret agreement between, say, the Prime Minister and the President of France would be a treaty in international


law. I might add that it would be permanently so unless it had a provision to the contrary. There is another provision in this convention—Article 56—which relates to that.

Mr. Deakins: Surely some secret agreement which my hon. Friend has called a treaty could not possibly be subject to the Order in Council procedure under the first part of subsection (3) which we are discussing, because it would then cease to be secret?

Mr. English: I do not think so. I think my hon. Friend will recollect that we all knew that the Prime Minister met the President of France; we all knew that they arrived at an agreement; and we all knew this from a look at the communiquéwhich they published at the end of their meeting; but none of us knew what they in fact agreed. It would be perfectly possible, as I understand it—and the Solicitor-General will tell us if this is not so—to conclude a secret treaty under this Bill and in international law and merely publish by Order in Council the fact that there was an agreement, because the Order in Council, we are told, is merely evidential in this instance.
I would accept that there might be later difficulties if there were an attempt to enforce an agreement that had not been published, but that is not the same thing, because this provision simply says that there would be an Order in Council which stated that a treaty was a treaty even if it was not, and that we would then, in certain circumstances, meet to approve it in this House, and that would be the end of it. It does not say that the treaty has to be scheduled to the Order in Council, and, indeed, we know that not necessarily all documents we are agreeing to now are published. I have quoted from one that is not at the moment published in any authoritative text at all, yet includes matter of great importance. We believe that a democracy should have the right to know what its legislature is discussing when changing its law. This is a point of importance which does not need to be enforced against the Council of Ministers in the sense that it is self-enforcing by the Council of Ministers, which has agreed it amongst itself.
In incorporating these things into our law, and excluding the courts by the

present provision which my Amendment seeks to dispel, I would also submit that we are doing this permanently. That is disastrous. In international law, if a treaty has no provision for its termination or withdrawal, then one simply cannot terminate it or withdraw from it except under certain conditions, such as fraud or something of that character. That has been generally accepted in these debates. What does not seem to have been accepted in these debates, and has been suggested by certain hon. and learned Members whose views differ from my own on this issue, is that we are limiting the rights of Parliament.
I said earlier that we are in a legal sense reversing the Henry VIII portion of the Reformation, the one which did not deal with theology but merely dealt with the structure of the canon law. People seem to be under the impression that Parliament can agree to this treaty, go into the Communities, and then, if it wishes, come out legally. It certainly is not true in international law. As the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said, it is a strange basis to go into something thinking that one could always break at least a portion of the law. That is not true of the law of the Communities, because Article 6 of the act annexed to the Treaty of Accession says quite specifically that it shall be repealed and amended only in accordance with its own provisions. I submit also that it is only doubtfully true in English law.
I suggest to the Solicitor-General that he have a look at two cases in law, one of which will interest the House for more than one reason. It is the case of R. (O'Brien) v. Military Governor, N.D.V. Internment Camp in Ireland in 1922. Mrs. O'Brien wished to get out from her illegal arrest. She had been arrested and interned without trial for six months in 1922, just at the period when the war of rebellion was ending, when the Irish constitution in a form similar to that in which we now have it was coming into force, but when it had not yet come into force. Mrs. O'Brien sought a writ of habeas corpus. That was granted, but at the same time, in one day, a special Act of Parliament was passed stating that, although she had to be produced before the court in accordance with its order, that order should cease to be valid—a procedure


with which this House will be quite familiar in the light of recent events. The Irish Court of Appeal ruled the Act invalid, the point being that there were certain provisions with which it did not comply.
There is another case, that of The Attorney General for New South Wales v. Trethowan, which will probably be familiar to many hon. and learned Members. That relates to a referendum provision. The Parliament of New South Wales, having passed a provision for a referendum, did not comply with it, and promptly the courts ruled that since it was not complying with this provision the Bill could not be submitted for Royal Assent.
I do not want to go into these issues of English law at this stage. I want now to come back to my Amendment. I believe that on all these issues, and many more which we shall come to in the course of the Bill, the Government for some reason wish to take a more authoritarian than democratic line. They have not suggested that we should have observers in the Council of Ministers, like the Germans. They have not suggested that draft proposals and provisions should be submitted to Parliament before the Council of Ministers considers them, like the Germans have. They had not even thought of the relationships between this House, the other House and the Communities until they suggested very feebly on Second Reading that we should set up an ad hoc committee, which is still being argued about.
In the Heath-Pompidou agreement it says that the discussion between the two led to a complete identity of view on the working and development of the Communities. Every single State in the European Communities, bar the French State, agrees that it wishes to democratise the Communities at least a little further. They might dispute how far. One of the reasons many Europeans want us in the Community is this. The entire Assembly, including the French Gaullists, has come down on the budgetary issue with the desire that the Assembly should have some power instead of this strange, secret Legislature of the Council of Ministers. The reason for the Government's attitude is clearly and openly expressed if one looks at the text of that agreement, that the Government are going to take a

French line in Europe. They want to hand over power, not merely from Britain to the Communities but from Legislatures to Executives. From Legislatures meeting openly and in public and discussing legislation before the whole of the Community, they want to hand power over to a secret group of Ministers meeting in private in Brussels or Luxembourg.

Mr. Jay: Not even Ministers in some cases.

Mr. English: My right hon. Friend is quite right. I was putting it at its highest.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Permanent representatives.

Mr. English: I was putting it at its highest and assuming that the permanent representatives are in some way under the control of their Ministers.
It seems to me that that is the political reason for the Government's attitude. I want the Government to do a very simple thing. I have spoken long enough, but I want them to answer one question. I want Members of the House—and not just on that side of the House but even on my side, because this is an issue which transcends party politics—to answer one question. Why, if one wishes to go into Europe, must one wish to go into an authoritarian Europe? Why can one not take the attitude of most Europeans and wish to go into a democratic Europe? That is the question I want this Government to answer on this and subsequent Amendments.
Democracy is not just voting at General Elections. It is not just the right to elect representatives to a Legislature. One of its simple bases, as we all know if we think of authoritarian States throughout the world, is the right of individuals—not great organisations, not great States, but individuals—to go to the courts and say "We know that you have the power to do so and so, but we do not think you have the power to do something that you have done" like these people in Ulster both in 1922 and recently who went to the courts and could do so. That could not be altered, except in the full glare of publicity by this House. That is the real essence of a free society. The free society is the one where one can sue the man who might knock on one's door to arrest one at midnight. That is the real


essence of it. It is not just a matter of elections.
By this Amendment, without in any way in this Amendment trying to preventus from going into the Community, I want the individual to be able to go to a court and say that a treaty cannot be incorporated as a Community treaty by mere fiat of the Executive. The Solicitor-General said the other day that this could not happen, that something like the Treaty of Versailles or an agreement with Russia or China, or something of this character, could not be included. The courts would say that this was a gross misuse of the power. Maybe; let us accept that, but there is no reason why one could not include the Heath-Pompidou agreement in the Community treaty. That actually relates to the Communities. It is an agreement between the Head of State and the Head of Government of these two countries about the Communities. No court could say it was irrelevant.
If the Government said that was a Community treaty by Order in Council, I fail to see that anybody could regard that as a gross misuse of this power. We might not expect it. We might not have thought it, but if the Government sought to conclude an agreement with France by saying that on every possible issue they would agree with France that they did not want powers given to the Assembly or taken away from the Council of Ministers, or the Council of Ministers meeting in public or anything of that character, under our law this could be incorporated as a Community treaty. The other States of the Communities would not regard it as such, but under the Bill it would be.
I wish to take that power of judgment away from the Executive and put it back where it properly belongs, in the courts, so that any individual can go along and say, "As a mere matter of evidence, you can say that this is a Community treaty, but I, an individual, am asking you, the judges learned in the law, whether in reality it is, in your opinion; because if it is not it should be void and destroyed". I ask the Government Front Bench a simple question: why not leave individuals with the rights they at present have, even if we wish to go into Europe? Why not keep the basic principles of democracy and liberty as well?

4.30 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) in his questioning of the Government about their intentions. I have listened for two days of Committee discussion on the Bill, in particular Clause 1. As I understand it, the burden of the Government's case as regards the procedures for Orders in Council is that there are safeguards, that we are not entering something where we have not got some chance to say "No" if we do not like it, and that there is some residual power left with the House of Commons. Indeed, The Times report and many other reports of our proceedings last week have emphasised the powers Parliament will still retain, and the word "safeguards" has been used in reports and by the Solicitor-General in his speeches.
I follow what my hon. Friend has said because I am genuinely mystified. Many hon. Members wish, for very good reasons of their own, for Britain to join the E.E.C. and there has been some discussion of terms. But part of the terms, I should have thought, is the machinery by which we attach ourselves to the Community—to use the analogy of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray), the way in which the pipeline of Community law is attached to this country. It is the ability to detach that pipeline should we choose—as it were, to insert filters into it—that we are discussing on the whole of the Clause. The serious debate is about the machinery that the men at the pipeline valve can insert.
The Government have been saying, "Ah, we have good safeguards and we can insert them where we wish." There are those of us who are questioning whether that is so. I should have thought that this debate falls outside whether or not we are in favour in principle of entry into the Community, because we are concerned with the operation of words which have been used so often by hon. Members opposite when they say, "In operation it does not quite work out like that." I ask the Government a number of questions. I hope that the Solicitor-General will explain the answers, in some cases specifically and in others generally.
When the debate started in the early morning of last Thursday week, we heard the phrase which I think will become a keynote of our debates, "unravelling the package". Indeed, those were the words used in the first instance by the Solicitor-General. Why do we have to unravel the package anyway? Why is there a need to unpack? Packing surely obscures what is beneath. I had always understood that in legislation length was not material. If one wishes to make something clear, it is sometimes better to put it in a little longer way so that anyone reading it can understand what is meant, rather than compressing it to such a degree that the thing becomes impossible to untangle, as has been apparent in our last few debates. Why cannot we have a slightly longer Bill, even if it says exactly the same thing? Perhaps three or four Clauses could be used to cover the ground covered by Clause 1.
We have begun to use shorthand in the debate. We have talked about subsection (3) (a) and (b), and the lawyers have, perhaps, objected to that, because it is the first part and the second part of the subsection. Why could not we have had two subsections labelled (a) and (b)? Any member of the public wanting to know what we are discussing might go to his public library and demand a copy of the Bill. If he was wise, he would read the Explanatory Memorandum. As he knows that we are debating Clause 1, because the Press and the media report us, he might then try to read the Clause. It would be very difficult for any member of the public who is not a lawyer to understand what it means.
Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), who is not inexperienced in matters of law or in the House of Commons, has said across the Floor of the Chamber, in answer to an intervention by the Solicitor-General, that he thought he knew what the Solicitor-General meant. Certainly that is true for my part. Every time we enter this debate we have to re-learn our definitions and get back into the swim of where we were before and to re-think our way into this muddle.
Why could we not have more definitions in the Clause? After all, it is a definitions Clause, as we are told. Apparently there are at least 11 sorts of treaty. At least we could have had two

of them defined clearly, because we have discussed them ad nauseam in Committee, and every hon. Member who asks about it takes up the time of the Solicitor-General, who has to re-define, over and over again, the treaties which the Community can make off its own bat and to which members are not party, in so far as those are treaties inside the existing scope of the Treaty of Rome and relate only to commerce and finance—the Solicitor-General will correct me if I am wrong—and, secondly, other treaties which lie outside the ambit of those matters and to which every individual member of the Community has to be a party.
That sounds simple, but it is not simple if one tries to disentangle that from the Bill. Each of those two sorts of treaty requires a completely different sort of procedure. In our hours and hours of debate we come to understand something about it. Why could not that have been put down in easily understandable phrasing in the Bill, even if the legal language was put a little further apart?
The Bill reminds me of trying to eat mashed potato in its dehydrated form. We need more water of common sense to give it some body so that it is easily digestible and at least reasonable to taste. If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have so much confidence in their Measure, it might have been more palatable to some of us, on the merits of the matter—and I am not discussing the merits now—if that matter were sorted out. Surely that would have been reasonable.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leith quite properly says, again using his analogy, "Let us look at this package and see what contraband we have inside". The Solicitor-General, in his bland, reassuring way, says that there is no contraband other than what anyone would have had to put into a Bill if they had assented to the principle of entering the E.E.C. We find in the Clause the mechanism for the progressive assimilation of Community law. That has been understood. It is the machinery of conversion for not only existing Community law but, under subsection (4), a vast, almost unimpeded range of other possible agreements. It is, as it were, the alchemist's touchstone, something which


touches and converts one type of agreement into another, all by Order in Council, which I shall come to shortly.
The Explanatory Memorandum says that Clause 1 deals with general provisions and provides principle definitions. These definitions are not laid out, certainly to any reasonable degree. On the ancillary treaties to which the United Kingdom becomes a partner it finishes with the flourish that such a treaty:
…on terms settled by that date, is included only if a draft Order in Council declaring it to be included has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
That is meant to be a good safeguard and it is a safeguard on which the Solicitor-General harped all the time. Nearly half of the Explanatory Memorandum is in regard to Part B, the so-called conversion Clause of the Order in Council. Why did the Explanatory Memorandum not say something like: "The purpose of the Clause is to give effect to jurisprudence of the European Court, which therefore requires the courts of the United Kingdom to secure the supremacy of Community law"? That is what it is about. Nobody can deny that because they were the two sentences used by the Solicitor-General in explaining the Clause. That seems fairly simple language. I do not believe it was because of inefficiency by the Government that it did not say this and I do not believe it was inadvertence. I do not understand it. The Solicitor-General used these words on 7th March:
The intention of the Bill is to secure the supremacy of Community law."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1333.]
A little earlier he said:
The Bill seeks to make it clear that, as has always been plainly necessary, the courts in this country could give effect to the jurisprudence of the European Court, and to the treaty obligations as they were discussed to some extent.…"—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1331.]
and so on. The Explanatory Memorandum should be such that a member of the public going into his public library to read it knows what we are discussing. This change of emphasis and lack of frankness by the Government, who are not being honest with the House or the public, is the sort of thing which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West mentioned.
I want to deal next with the question of Parliament and its function and the

so-called safeguard right. On 7th March the Solicitor-General, referring to the Order in Council and the affirmative Resolution, said:
The question would be entirely at large, and it is important that it should be so."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1342.]
The hon. and learned Gentleman has been described by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) as a Houdini. He can get through a tiny crack. Any ordinary person not learned in the law would say that it sounded fair enough. The treaty requirement is to be converted to our domestic law under subsection 3 Part B and the question will be entirely at large. This was what the Solicitor-General said. But this is part of his technique. He is a very clever man, or perhaps he is not very clever, because the important word in his phrase is "question", and the question is not whether we approve the treaty but whether an Order in Council defines it one way or the other. The most important question in the proceedings of the House is not whether a treaty be approved but whether the definition which the Order in Council gives it is correct, and that is quite a different thing. I imagine if he were questioned about this that would be the explanation of the Solicitor-General. Behold, Houdini has got through the crack which was not apparent when he used the phrase.
The Solicitor-General later said:
Parliament would retain the right to affirm or not to affirm."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1343.]
But he did not say what it is affirming. It is only affirming an Order in Council which defines; it is not affirming the treaty at all. Finally, he said:
That is a real, effective and genuine safeguard, and it does not deserve to be dismissed in the way in which some right hon. and hon. Members have sought."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1344.]
In other words, these fine phrases sound good until we examine them, as I have tried to do. The Solicitor-General has told us we have a fine safeguard in subsection (3).

[Mr. E. L. MALLALIEU in the Chair.]

4.45 p.m.

Anyone reading the reports of our debate might be so persuaded because they would consider the Solicitor-General to


be an honourable man who knows all about the law. They might believe that the Government would not deceive them. So, I come back to my original question: why was this sort of thing not laid out clearly in the Explanatory Memorandum? There is, admittedly, nothing in the Order in Council because of the fine flowing words that it must be passed by both Houses of Parliament. That is a safeguard which everyone understands. I offer the Government these phrases for the Explanatory Memorandum: "Subsections (3) and (4) enable any Government to make an Order in Council declaring any treaty, protocol or annexe to a treaty through any international agreement entered into prior to 22nd January, 1972, to be regarded as one of the Community treaties. After 22nd January, 1972, any such treaty, protocol, annexe or international treaty can be regarded as a Community treaty provided that a draft so defining it has been approved by each House of Parliament."

That seems to be the substance of what we are trying to discuss, and we have taken several hours to discuss it. Here is the contraband of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray). Contraband is not of itself unhealthy, but it has not been declared, and the Government have not declared the sort of points that I have made.

There is a further stage, because whilst sticking to his guns—saying that this is a great safeguard the Solicitor-General has been forced down a most unexpected turning. Late last Wednesday night in his speech to raise some of the points I have not outlined. He had to admit that it was clear that it was not an affirmation approving the treaty but an affirmation approving its definition. There appeared to be no exit. But Houdini did it again. He said on 8th March:
Suppose, then, that a significant part of the House thought that it was one that required…
that is the Order in Council—
…the introduction of substantive legislation, to make detailed changes of the kind contained in the second Part of the Bill, for example. That action would be one of the considerations that Parliament would want to bear in mind in deciding whether to approve the specification of a treaty in that way".
So the Solicitor-General has now agreed we are not discussing the merits of the treaty but only its definition. He says

that before deciding this definition we want to look at the sort of treaty it is and if we wish we can make legislation. He said:
One of the reasons why approval could be refused would be not merely that Parliament did not like it, but that Parliament was not prepared to tolerate the Executive resorting to acceptance of it merely by an Order in Council."—[Official Report, 8th March. 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1551.]

In other words, it is the so-called prerogative legislation. Parliament could say, "We don't like it. We want to do it ourselves. We shall have legislation on this matter." The Solicitor-General says that that would be quite in order if Parliament so wished. But whether it could get through the debate about the Order in Council on the definition, I do not know. I sense that at some stage a ruling from the Chair might stop such action.

But suppose we do legislate ourselves for something that an E.E.C. treaty says we must assimilate into our own law. Then, to use the analogy of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leith, instead of having a direct pipeline we have a sort of hydraulic mechanism to convert into British statute law an indefinite European legal terminology, making it something more customary in this country, something the courts can understand because it is in accordance with traditional Parliamentary practice. That sounds reasonable.

Unfortunately, we have reached this stage not because the Government said that would be one of the ways round the problem but because in the course of cross-examination the Solicitor-General had to produce this rabbit from a hat to get himself out of a difficulty. So we can add a third purpose of the Clause.

If the Government perhaps changed their mind and had to produce another Bill, I suggest that its Explanatory Memorandum should read: "Should Parliament not so approve the definition of the treaty it can as an alternative procedure pass legislation. Further, any such legislation must be fully in accord with the provisions of Clause 2(1) of the Bill, whereby all rights, liabilities and obligations arising under that treaty and all the treaties of the E.E.C. must be given effect. Parliament can by use of this procedure choose to interpret Community legislation into its own legislation and


into the statutes of this country." In other words, we can do what the Solicitor-General says, or we might be able to if we can get that procedure under way.

But this is not as good as it sounds. If we left it at that, no doubt The Times, the radio and all the other commentators could say that we now have a procedure whereby we can legislate for ourselves. So far, so good, but we could not frame that legislation other than exactly in accord with all rights, treaties, obligations and so on as contained in Clause 2(1). When the Solicitor-General mentioned this, he was very careful and right to say, "…as, for example, in the second part of this Bill." But it is the first part of the Bill, if it becomes an Act, that means that any subsequent legislation on the matter must be within those terms. What safeguard is that?

We have the alleged safeguard in an Order in Council, which the Solicitor-General at one stage said was even more flexible than legislation. Then, after a great deal of cross-examination, he admitted that we can have legislation if we want to, which sounds fine. But when we examine it we find that if Clause 2(1) has been enacted the legislation must be in very tight terms, and therefore is no more a safeguard than a city council making byelaws under the terms of an Act of Parliament already passed.

There are three points. First, there is the question of what the law actually means, and that Clause 1 is a conversion mechanism. Secondly, the safeguards the Explanatory Memorandum makes out to be there do not exist at all. Thirdly, the Solicitor-General has introduced another means of perpetuating Community law by legislation of this House, which he did not mention earlier and which I have not heard mentioned at all, except last Wednesday evening in response to a question.

The Government are in some difficulty here. Either they have tripped up, as the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton)says, and have inadvertently produced a bad Bill, or there is another explanation. I can only assume, as the Government keep on saying that they wish to deal openly and honestly with the country, and that every-

one has known that this would happen, that they have been remiss, that perhaps the Parliamentary draftsmen have been busy on other Bills, like the Housing Finance Bill. Perhaps they have had the youngest men on this Bill. Perhaps they were so anxious to save paper and the time of the House that they have compressed it into interlocking phrases so complex that nobody can understand. What is the explanation if it is not that?

I know that many hon. Members want to go into the E.E.C. with open eyes. That can be done only when we have examined the mechanism, which is highly defective. It is partly contraband, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leith has pointed out, and the bits and pieces of it are appearing from the package as we unravel it. It may even be that the Solicitor-General is inventing the mechanism as we go along. If he is not, why did not he mention the legislative process when he introduced the Clause, and earlier in the debate? Why did it emerge only when he was questioned closely on the so-called safeguards of the procedure of the Order in Council? My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West asked whether we were moving in a democratic way or an authoritarian way.

The Amendment must be supported, or the Government must tell us why it should not be, and answer the questions we have put to them.

Mr. Powell: The hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing) complained that this interpretation Clause did not contain enough interpretations. I intervene only briefly to ask my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General for one interpretation on the Clause which I think arises directly out of the Amendment, moved by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), the object of which was it to make sure that no Government now or in the future could arbitrarily designate a treaty as being one of the treaties that trigger the consequences of the Bill. That is the purpose of the amendment of the first two lines of subsection (3).
When we look at the scope within which a Government could so act arbitrarily or, to put it the other way round, the scope for interpretation of the words in subsection (2), it seems to me that the


limits of the subsection are fairly narrow and precise. As we read through the definition of treaties, we find that subsection 2(a) is precise and that subsection 2(b) is precise, but then we come to lines 5–8, in the first part of which we read of a treaty
entered into by any of the Communities, with or without any of the member States",
That at any rate has its limits; a treaty that was not a Community treaty at all could not be regarded as falling within that definition.
So finally, in pursuit of the opportunity that might be open to the Government to recognise the Treaty of Versailles as a treaty for the purpose of the Bill, we come to lines 8 and 9:
or entered into, as a treaty ancillary to any of the treaties, by the United Kingdom;
Will my hon. and learned Friend direct his attention to that expression, which is of considerable importance and of which it would be helpful to the Committee to know the Government's interpretation? It centres upon the word "ancillary". Does "ancillary" mean "in the general context of the treaties, to do with the Community or with the development of the Community", or does it mean, in a stricter and narrower sense, "subordinate"?
5 p.m.
Of course, the natural meaning of "ancillary" is subordinate—carrying out a purpose already determined by the treaties which exist. I must admit that that is how I would have been inclined to interpret the word "ancillary" but for what the Solicitor-General told the Committee in previous sittings. When hon. Members have asked how the future development of the Community would take place, by what instruments the successive stages of development would be marked, I understood my hon. and learned Friend to point precisely to those lines and to say that it would be by treaties entered into by the United Kingdom, which would become treaties for the purposes of Clause 1.
If this is so, it would seem that the word "ancillary" has a very wide sense, that it means not merely subordinate to existing treaties but building upon existing treaties to extend their scope. This appears to be an unusual meaning of the word. I should be grateful if my hon. and learned Friend would indicate

whether I have correctly understood his previous advice to the Committee and in what sense the Government themselves take the term "ancillary" here, for it is in those lines that the principal scope lies for that arbitrary decision on the part of a Government in future which the hon. Member for Nottingham, West wished to remove by his Amendment.

Mr. William Molloy: Whether we are opposed to this country's entry to the E.E.C. or in support of it, I think every hon. Member will agree that this is one of the greatest issues that has ever come before the House of Commons. Some of us have from time to time argued that even if we were not in possession of the facts in detail, there was a grave risk of the authority of the House of Commons being diminished and, ipso facto, the authority of the people of the country being diminished in deciding their way of life in general.
As now the terms are slowly but painfully being spelled out, we can see some of the grave dangers which lie ahead. Some of the warnings of crags, rocks and shoals which lie ahead and for which the Government appear to be heading are being pointed out by hon. Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) and the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). Paradoxically it is they, who have expressed grave apprehensions about the whole business, who have shouldered the responsibility of pointing out these grave dangers.
It seems that only when we start amending our copies of the Bill, for example to see how it would read if the Government were sensible enough to accept this Amendment, that we can see how dangerous are some of the aspects of the Bill. Already in discussion of this Amendment we have heard of the danger of limitation, if not of obliteration, of the rights of the House of Commons. It must follow if there is any impingement on or erosion of the rights of the House of Commons that there must be erosion of the rights of the people who sent us here. This the Government have not seen. In so far as we are all agreed, as I think we are, that this is a massive issue—probably the greatest that the House has ever debated—there should be some administrative arrangements to make transparently clear to the


people what is going on day by day in this Committee.
This is not a matter which should be left to people's judgment according to whatever newspaper one reads or to what television or radio report one listens. I ask the Solicitor-General to consider this. Perhaps he will not be able to answer at the end of today's discussions or tomorrow, but he could take this matter to the Cabinet. I do not think he would disagree that with his right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster he is in charge of legislation referring to a great issue facing the country. This is not a Bill to deal with our law per see, nor to denationalise some undertaking. The Government have given up silly ideas like that. It is not a Bill to take something into public ownership, which someone else can undo later. It is not a Measure which simply relates to the courts of this country; it relates to the entire make up of the nation and the rôle which our people shall play. It is a Measure which will affect every family in the country. Those who are not attracted to this Measure believe that it will do so in a dangerous way.
Perhaps the Government will consider illustrating what Clause 1 (3) means. They might ask my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) to produce a pamphlet which could be obtained at any post office and by which everyone could understand what the subsection means. That seems a very fair proposition. All Governments are guilty of thinking that it is their responsibility to make things clear only for lawyers. If on any issue such a myopic attitude should be abandoned, it is on this one for everyone in the land has a right to know what is being done in his name to reduce or take away his traditional rights.

Mr. Neil Marten: Is the hon. Member aware that in Norway the Government are giving a grant to the pro-European movement and to the anti-Common Market movement to help them to put their case? This is something which the hon. Member might consider.

Mr. Molloy: I am not given to speaking from notes, but if the hon. Member

for Banbury (Mr. Marten) had been able to glance at my notes for this speech he would see that I would have been coming to that point in a few moments. Now I shall come to it immediately. I think the Committee knows that for some time I have had the privilege of serving on the British delegation to the Council of Europe. There is a massive division there. There are those on that great Council who believe in a much wider and broader form of European unity and those who belong to the Council who believe that this should be kept to a tight little group.
There are people who believe that Europe consists of Western Germany, Italy, France and the Benelux countries, and when Norway and Denmark are mentioned they say, "Oh, yes, of course, they are in Europe". A big argument is going on at the Council of Europe. The intervention of the hon. Member for Banbury is a valid one which supports my contention. The Norwegians consider that this matter is so important that the people's money should be spent in informing the people about their future.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: My hon. Friend will get the Charlemagne Prize if he carries on in this way.

Mr. Molloy: I am not responsible for the remarkable thinking of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). He must not imagine that the ideas which spring to his mind are my motives.

Mr. William Baxter: I am interested in the point made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten). Will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that this Government and the previous Government subscribed substantially to the pro-Marketeers but neither gave any assistance to the anti-Marketeers?

Mr. Molloy: If I were to comment on that, Mr. Mallalieu, there is a possibility that you would rule me out of order.
The Labour Administration thought that they had a responsibility to examine what would be involved if the nation joined the E.E.C. They instituted certain examinations and said that afterwards the terms would be examined. That is what we are doing now, except that the


Prime Minister has already agreed the terms. The Prime Minister has signed the Treaty of Accession although I do not believe that he knows every word contained in all the documents which are involved in Britain's joining the E.E.C. The House of Commons has a right to subject every line of the Bill to proper examination.
The Amendment by itself helps to clarify the situation. By substituting the words of the Amendment for the words deleted in subsection (3) one can see how serious the issue is. If the Government really thought that the Bill was couched in terms which the people could understand, they would go on record as a most arrogant Government. By making no attempt to explain the words of the Bill the Government are assuming that we are already in the Common Market and that the House of Commons does not exist.
5.15 p.m.
To be fair, there are hon. Members who are in favour of our entry into the E.E.C. but who are nevertheless apprehensive about the wording of subsection (3). Even those who are in favour of Britain acceding to the Treaty of Rome are not in favour of going into Europe on the terms set out in subsection (3). They should take their courage in both hands and support the Amendment. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) put his finger directly on several serious issues and asked challenging questions of the Solicitor-General which I hope he will answer.
The public at large do not realise that if we go into the Common Market there is the possibility of an unknown member of the Commission having power over their daily lives. That may seem to be an exaggeration but it is justified by subsection (3). A clear definition should be given of what are Community treaties. Even if we are prepared to accede to certain provisions in the Treaty of Rome and in other agreements which will be made, the House of Commons will always maintain its right not to implement instructions from the E.E.C., and this would not be the first time that this has happened. We know that the West Germans have been penalised for breaking Community law. We should at least have a right of challenge.
Unless we are careful about what we do, the British people in years to come will be faced with the question whether the voice which decides what is to be done in this country or in the name of this country is the voice of the British people and the House of Commons or the voice of the non-elected Commissioners in Brussels.
These are the great issues to which the Government should be turning their minds. I hope the Solicitor-General will take these points seriously in consideration and will have regard to the massive ramifications of the subsection. If they believe there are no dangers for the future of this country, then they should accept the Amendment.

Mr. Michael Foot: Several of my hon. Friends still wish to participate in this debate, and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Donald King Murray) will be available to give his views to the Committee following the remarks of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General. I wish to intervene for a short time to make some comments about the official Labour Party view on these Amendments.
Although Amendment No. 72 does not appear to be far-reaching and in one sense is drafting, I believe it can be said that it clarifies the subsection. On those grounds alone the Government should be willing to accept it. It underlines the point embraced in Amendment No. 127, but I believe that the Committee would we well advised to accept our Amendment No. 72.
Amendment No. 178 seeks to introduce some form of negative parliamentary control over what is proposed in subsection (3). In our discussions last week—and indeed this will happen in future discussions—we sought to introduce more formidable protections than those which are set out in Amendment No. 178. We have sought by various means to strengthen the arrangements, not only by providing for an affirmative Resolution but also by introducing the even stronger protection of an Act of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing) referred to this matter, and this is the sort of protection that we feel should be secured. Such protection would have been secured if some of the Amendments tabled by the hon. Member


for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) had been accepted. The same applies to some of the Amendments which we originally sought to table.
The Solicitor-General at the conclusion of his remarks during the debate last week mentioned how future Governments would deal with the major problem of how we are to be protected against future treaties in the Community which would become part of our law, namely by the sole protection of an affirmative Resolution. It appeared from the Solicitor-General's remarks that he felt more extensive protection should be available. His words are not entirely clear, but they are important. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will choose to elucidate his views on this occasion.
Even more important, we should like to see the remarks he made at the end of his speech last week elucidated in the Bill itself. This is what we have been seeking to do by our Amendments. It is somewhat peculiar that the Solicitor-General tended to throw in this aspect as if it were a make-weight, as if it were just another ad hoc committee, or even something thrown to the ad hoc committee. We should like to know whether he will reaffirm his previous remarks and whether he will say in what form he will incorporate those undertakings in the legislation. We should also like to know in what form he will envisage any such resort to be made and how he will carry out the various and diverse means of dealing with these new treaties which will be forthcoming. I hope he will give a full explanation of this matter to the Committee. We regard it as crucial to these debates.
Some of the debates on these Amendments naturally overlap our previous debates, but it is clear that we are breaking some new ground. This is the first set of Amendments which begins to deal with subsection (3) without direct reference to the earlier part of the Clause. It is obvious that, as the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-west has said, the definition of the word "ancillary" is important in indicating the extent to which Amendment No. 127, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), is necessary. We hope that we shall be told. In other words, this is the first

occasion on which we have approached subsection (3) by Amendments without having to take fully into account what is said in other parts of the Clause.
Subsection (3) is a somewhat strange provision, and the more we listened to the debates last week the more it became apparent that the subsection could be deleted altogether. Indeed, the Solicitor-General came near to admitting as much. If the subsection had never appeared it would have been possible for the Act to have proceeded and it would have carried out roughly what the Government are intending to carry out. Subsection (3) is an addition to what is required to carry cut the necessities of the treaties and of Government undertakings. For those different or contradictory reasons, it would have been possible for the Government to have introduced the Bill without including subsection (3). In other words, the subsection is a pure flight of fancy by the Solicitor-General.
It was said by Philip Gaudella, when writing of the christening of Palmerston, that he was christened John—"Henry" after his father, and "John" being a pure flight of fancy. It is roughly the same with subsection (3). The rest of the Clause is required for our entry into the Comon Market, but subsection (3) is a pure flight of fancy on the part of the Solicitor-General in order to impress the Committee with the suggestion that he has some liberal instincts, after all. Of course, he was not going as far as committing himself to passing an Act of Parliament to deal with these matters. However, this subsection is the Solicitor-General's very own. It is not part of the iron necessities of the Rome Treaty. It is the Solicitor-General's idea of a night out on the tiles. It is the Solicitor-General letting himself go and saying that, even though we have to be committed to all these requirements being incorporated in our law under the treaties that we have signed, we still make the pretence that we have some choice available to us. That is the explanation of this very peculiar subsection which, on the Solictor-General's own confession, could have been omitted altogether.
5.30 p.m.
This deals with the first part of the subsection to which the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West is directly related. We have


had many attacks on this Clause before. We have been told by the Solicitor-General that it is evidential, that it is a matter of convenience. When we have pressed him, we have been told that even if this provision were left out, it would not really make any difference to what would be the undertakings and the consequences of our having accepted the treaties. I believe that the subsection is a strange piece of window dressing.
I shall not go so much into the second part of it and the acceptance of the affirmative Resolution governing some part of our proceedings, or that part which some regard as the most important of all, which is the development of future treaties, how they are incorporated into our law, and how this Parliament is to have any protection against them. But I hope that the Solicitor-General has understood from our debates last week that we on this side of the Committee and a large number of right hon. and hon. Members opposite regard the protections set out in subsection (3) as being totally inadequate. The very fact that the Solicitor-General made the gesture is proof that he realised that what he was proposing was not satisfactory. Once the hon. and learned Gentleman accepted the idea of this kind of so-called protection and of the affirmative Resolution, he was already going a good deal of the way to admitting that he should go much further and accept the Act of Parliament, which is what we have argued and what he came near to admitting at the end of our debates last week. We shall press during our debates by every means possible to ensure that proper parliamentary protections are provided. Certainly we do not regard the protections which have been adumbrated so far as coming anywhere near meeting that definition.
Just before the Committee interrupted its proceedings last week, I ventured to suggest that one of the activities to which hon. Members might apply their minds over the weekend was to re-read our debates last week. As I did not contribute to them directly, I can say with the utmost modesty that I believe that they should be read by every hon. Member. I hope that they will be. At a time when we have important Committees considering Housing Bills, I realise that it is extremely difficult for hon.

Members to attend the Committee stage of this very important Bill. But hon. Members in all parts of the House should recognise that we are engaged in a very serious business. We are engaged not only in discussing what is to happen to the Committee stage of this Bill. We are engaged in discussing what is to happen to a whole legion of Committee stages of Bills yet unborn. The list cannot be published in any Schedule. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West, has tried to make sure that all the treaties which should be incorporated are set out in the Schedule. I suspect that he is returning to what the right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) described in some of our earlier debates as "the lurking treaties". But I say to the Committee, as I am sure other hon. Members are trying to say to their constituents, that what we are discussing in these debates is the future of Parliament. We are discussing whether Parliament is to be transformed into a different institution altogether.
It is no use anyone telling me that there have been changes in Parliament in the past 20 or 30 years which have altered the way in which we conduct our business on these matters and that therefore we should not be afraid of future changes. No one is afraid of future changes. However, we have the highest responsibility to ensure what those changes are.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West, my hon. Friend the Member for Acton, and the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West have illustrated, all the moves seem to be in one direction. They are all in the direction of removing powers from this Parliament and placing them in the hands of a distant Executive over which this House has no specific control under the Clause that we are debating.
The matter is made even worse by the fact that the Bill itself has been presented to the House in a manner which we on this side of the Committee regard as shocking. I am not returning to the form and scope of the Bill which in our opinion has defrauded this House of the capacity to discuss and vote directly on matters which it should decide. This Bill appears to have been introduced by people who have no respect for parliamentary procedures.
Anyone examining the debate on Second Reading will not see stated by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in his description of its nature any reference to the implications of Clause 1, to what is to happen to future treaties, and how they are to be incorporated into the law of the land. All these are issues which have been unearthed in Committee. They were not brought to the attention of Parliament or the country by the Ministers responsible on Second Reading, in the debates on the Money Resolution and the Ways and Means Resolution, or in the Explanatory Memorandum. The methods which Governments, especially Governments who boast of their open style of government, normally employ to say what are the implications of Measures were not taken to tell the country and the House the implications that the Government saw in this Bill.
A notable and notorious speech was made at the weekend in which it was said that our affairs in this House are in some way arcane. That was the word used about some of our procedures in the last week or two. It is an exquisite word. The word "arcane" means hidden, secret, concealed. There has been nothing hidden or secret or concealed about our debates. But there is something hidden and secret and concealed—arcane to use this beautiful word—in the Bill itself. But the proceses of Parliament enable us to unravel these arcane mysteries. We have now discovered that the processes of Parliament itself have been used for that very proper purpose. Not merely have they been used properly: they have been used eximiously. They are being used eximiously and they will continue to be used eximiously until we compel all hon. Members to recognise what is happening.
We do not propose to relinquish the discussion on this Bill before everybody in the country knows what it is about. That is our elementary duty as hon. Members. We certainly seek to ensure, particularly in view of what has been unravelled and unearthed in the last few days—after all, we have had only two very short days of debate so far in Committee—[An Hon. Member: "None next week."] Next week, we may be discussing the value-added tax and some of my hon. Friends will be leading the battle against that part of the Common Market legislation. Let there be no

mistake on these matters. There will be a permanent fight, which will not be relaxed in any sense. None of my hon. Friends should be under that misapprehension.
Of course we will sustain this fight and unravel the Government's proposals. But in the two reasonably short days of debate we have already started to unravel—although we have not yet secured the remedy, which is what we are searching for in these Amendments—what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has called prerogative legislation.
This was part of the reason why the Solicitor-General tried the escape of referring to the Act of Parliament which might be brought in to deal with the matter—because he knows that he is up against it and that what he is proposing under his Bill is prerogative legislation. The first part of subsection 3, which my hon. Friend seeks to amend, sets a form in which that prerogative legislation could be presented to the House. The second part of that subsection presents an entirely inadequate shield against prerogative legislation.
Therefore, even on the first Clause of the Bill, which was never thought to be of major importance, on any of the opportunities open to the Government—particularly on a Bill of this nature, on which the Solicitor-General had certain obligations—the hon. and learned Gentleman should have come to the House and told us. He should not have been the last to talk about the implications of Clause 1: he should have been the first. But we had to drag it out of him.
We were told before that Clause 2 is the important part of the Bill. There are many important and far-reaching aspects of Clause 2, but what has been discovered and what was never stated to us by anyone was that there were implications buried in Clause 1, which were defined only as dealing with the Title and interpretation. It is high time for the Solicitor-General to decide that he should treat the House with a good deal more can dour. Perhaps it will pay him in the end.
5.45 p.m.
We do not claim that these Amendments cure the whole disease. Some of the Amendments which the Government rejected last week would have gone


further to deal with the disease. But we have put down Amendments, some of which were newly incorporated and which we put down as the result of the discussions last week, as we were entitled to do and as we shall continue to do as the debates proceed, particularly because of the revelations of the Government's mind and attitudes.
All Oppositions, and anyone concerned about the procedures of the House, will have to have protection from the Chair in ensuring that Amendments of this nature are properly considered. One of the Amendments has been put down on this account.
We are not claiming—so I hope that the Solicitor-General will not brush them away too flippantly—that these amendments cure the disease which I have been seeking to discuss. But we do say that, if they were incorporated in the Bill, it would at any rate be the first sign that the Government were aware of what they are up against. What the Solicitor-General and the Government have to realise is that the Committee will not allow this piece of legislation to be rammed through. If we did, we should betray everything that we have ever stood for.
Nor will we accept that most arrogant of all doctrines—especially on a Bill like this—that it is perfectly drawn and can not be altered at all. We all know why Governments try that trick—because they want to avoid having a Report stage—but that is not a good reason for dealing with a matter like this. We are dealing not only with this Bill but with scores and hundreds of future Bills. We are deciding how this is to be dealt with properly by the House.
I therefore urge the Solicitor-General first to consider these Amendments on their merits, to see whether he can incorporate them in his subsection. At least he could not argue that they do anything to injure the possibility of our entry into Europe one way or another. These Amendments can be accepted by those who wish to enter Europe as well as by those who do not.
The first thing that we wish to establish in these debates is whether the Government are interested in protecting the rights of the House. We have not seen a great deal of evidence of it in these

debates. Nor have we seen much evidence of it in the form in which it has been presented.
I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will not come up with the old story that all this was agreed in 1967 by the previous Government. It is not the case, because that Government never translated the proposals for entering Europe into detailed legislative form. We have the clear assurance of the Attorney-General of the time that that previous Administration had in no way translated the proposals for entry into this kind of detailed legislative enactment. So that excuse will not work.
Even if it were true, it is not a fit argument for the Committee. Certainly when we argue with the Solicitor-General and say that a subject has to be dealt with on its merits, I wonder whether he knows what the words mean? If I say to him that Guinness is good for him, it is no good his saying he has seen in many reported statements in the past that it is good, and that is enough and that is the end of the argument. He has to produce the detailed evidence that it is good for our health and for our prospects. He has to produce the detailed evidence that what he is suggesting is the best for the health of this British House of Commons and for the people that this British House of Commons is supposed to serve.
That is the level on what the Solicitor-General must conduct this argument, and it is still not too late for him to do that. If he is going to do it, it will mean that the Government will have to give their mind to which Amendments they are going to accept—Amendments dealing with a whole range of matters. If the Government came to us in that spirit and said that they were going to examine all the Amendments and arguments put forward from both sides of the Committee, it would make a great deal of difference to the conduct of this debate and would, indeed, be very good for the Committee.
It should also be recognised that we are dealing with a situation in which these matters are not confined to the views put forward from this side of the Committee. Hon. Members in all parts of the Committee—I hope I can include the Liberal Party in this—want to protect the rights of Parliament.
I hope that the Solicitor-General will not say that these are such trivial matters that the Cabinet should not be interrupted to deal with them. They are not trivial matters at all; they concern the whole future of the House of Commons and its relation to the people, and how it can serve the people. We propose to use our parliamentary rights to the limit to ensure that those matters are properly discussed and properly settled, and we will do that with every means available to us, to force the Government to adopt this attitude. So far they have shown little sign of wishing to do so, but I hope we are going to have some change of heart from the Solicitor-General.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Geoffrey Howe): The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) has returned with a narrowly repetitive réprise of the general theme he has been advancing throughout our whole debate on this matter for some weeks, tendentiously and occasionally relating to the Amendments currently before the Committee, generally asserting and reasserting the broad case, which he has done on many occasions, for upholding the rights of Parliament. I accept the strength of that but it does not increase the force or relevance in the context of these debates merely by repetition, nor by repeated links with something which verges on, if I may be allowed the phrase, personal assaults in relation to my own rôle in relation to this legislation. The hon. Gentleman continuously asserts that previous considerations of the principles are irrelevant to the merits of the Bill and he seeks to demolish the argument, which we have inevitably been obliged to advance many times already, that a lot of this was very well known and appreciated in 1967, as irrelevant.
The hon. Member invites me to accept as equally cogent the supposition that Guinness is good for me. Let me show him how the Guinness argument applies to this. The Guinness in this legislative bottle is the same Guinness as that which commended itself to the last Government and the one before, and I am entitled to say, in assessing the merits of this, that a very large number of other Ministers in a previous Government and the one before tasted this liquid and found it

worthwhile. Indeed, I am entitled to say that the beverage was tested by the last Government almost to destruction.
The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale can never have read the passage on page 387 of that notable work written by the Leader of the Opposition describing how the last Government approached the problem. He described—it is not irrelevant though it may be embarrassing for hon. Members opposite—the immense detail with which each issue was the subject of an authoritative paper presented to the Cabinet and how papers were submitted, including one on the constitutional issues involved, prepared under the direction of the Lord Chancellor.
The Leader of the Opposition said he was anxious
that no colleague should feel that the decision was in any way rushed, that any relevant issue—even the most tangential—was not examined and discussed, or that he, or the Cabinet as a whole, was being 'bounced' into a decision.…
I told my colleages that the fullest time would be available for so important a matter and that the final decision would not be taken until every minister felt that it had been adequately discussed. We met roughly twice a week from Easter until the beginning of May, taking one or two subjects at each meeting. Whenever any asked for more information, or a further paper—or for a matter to come back to us for reconsideration—this was agreed. If anyone had asked for a document on the effect of entry into the Market on British pigeon-fancying, he would have got it; but no one did.
Was ever Guinness so truly tested as that?

Mr. Foot: I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. Many people have said, from all sides, that we all know that the general considerations about entering into the Common Market were discussed before. What we are doing under the Bill is dealing with the question of parliamentary protection and the form of the Bill. Therefore, when the hon. and learned Gentleman quotes members of the previous Administration, perhaps he will at the same time note what was said by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones), the former Attorney-General, who can speak with absolute authority about this. He said last week:
I am certain that we would not have accepted machinery of the kind to be established under this Bill, which will leave parliamentary involvement and influence utterly naked."—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1490.


That is the view of the Minister who was most intimately concerned with this aspect of the Bill, and I hope the hon. and learned Gentleman will apply himself to that.

The Solicitor-General: I am only too willing to do so, but I feel it necessary, if only for the record, to spend a moment or two answering the more general and more relevant arguments which the hon. Member advanced, and also to challenge his assertion that explanations and expositions on this Clause or any other part of the Bill has to be dragged out of me or any other Minister. He may recollect that we had to sit some nine hours through the first futile night before I was able to speak to the first Amendment and place on the record a correct exposition of the points he has presented to me as though they were new discoveries.
I do not propose in replying to deal with any of the points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) about the definition of treaties, which arises under the next subsection and Amendments to it, or with the Amendments by the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing) dealing with the second part of subsection (3), because those either have been debated on the previous trio of Amendments or arise on the next trio. I am dealing with the points raised—

Mr. Spearing: The hon. and learned Gentleman has mentioned the points I raised in regard to the trio of Amendments. Would he not agree that this matter came up fairly late on 8th March and we have not had an opportunity for debate? Further, will he reply to my point about the expanding size of the Bill?

The Solicitor-General: I have listened to the points the hon. Gentleman has made.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West asked about the extent to which decisions of the Council of Ministers have been published and are available. All the material texts in force, the first batch, prepared on 10th November, 1971—that is, all of those which will be binding upon us—are already published and I have told the House of Commons that arrangements for subsequent publication are now going through. The rules of procedure of the Council of Ministers

regulating matters of internal procedure have no effect on the Community law applicable to this country. By the Treaty of Accession they are to be adapted after entry.
6 p.m.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West dealt with the point to which he had previously referred about the extent to which the citizens of this country can challenge the acts of the Community. I repeat, with more amplification, that the distinction is not as substantial as the hon. Gentleman seeks to suggest between the civil system of law in this country and that practised in the Communities.
By Article 173 any person who is directly and individually concerned with a Community instrument can directly challenge it before the European Court of Justice. By Article 175 any person similarly affected can challenge a failure of the Community institutions to act. By Articles 178 and 215 any person who suffers damage can, in the Community Court, bring proceedings for wrongful acts of the Community. By Article 183 a person can get a remedy in the courts of his national country for breach of contract.
By Article 177, to which I referred when the hon. Member for Nottingham, West raised this matter last time—this is an important point—if any Community instrument is invoked against any individual he can challenge that instrument directly in our courts. He cannot seek a declaration to set it aside, but he can challenge its validity in our courts which, under Article 177(b), can refer it to the Community Court, if necessary.

[Sir ALFRED BROUGHTON in the Chair]

Mr. English: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that the definition of "directly and individually concerned", in respect of the person who can challenge, is rather more restrictive than might be imagined? It is something similar to our law of definition. If I were to say "All Conservatives are something defamatory", no Conservatives could sue me because there are too many of them; they are too amorphous a number. However if, outside Parliament, I were to say, "All Conservative Members of Parliament are something defamatory", any one of them could sue me. Does the Solicitor-General accept that this is a


more limited category? For example, an illegal Act might raise the taxes of every taxpayer. They would be far too amorphous a mass; they could not bring individual actions because it would not, within the meaning of the Roman law decisions, be
of direct and individual concern

The Solicitor-General: There is a difference of degree of that kind. The hon. Gentleman will recall that in this country, for a person to found his right to a declaration in the courts, he has to establish a sufficient locus stand, a sufficient interest. Therefore, this is only a difference of degree. If a regulation or instrument of the Community affected an ascertained number or class of people, that would probably be sufficient to give a right under Article 173. apart from the shield available to a person under Articles 177(b) and 173.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West, on the inter-relationship between Amendment No. 127 and matters about which I have just been talking, suggested that if we left the first part of Clause 1(3) as it is, we might set aside or reduce to no value the right of a citizen to challenge whether a treaty was or was not a Community treaty. The question is whether, apart from his rights in our courts, a citizen would have an opportunity, under Article 173, to challenge the validity of a Community treaty before the Community Court. I am sorry. A citizen would not have that right. A member State would have the right, under Article 173, to challenge the validity of a treaty before the Community Court. Aside from that, the individual citizen would probably have a right under Article 177(b).
That at least is the analysis of Gerhard Bebr, one of the favourite authors of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray), who suggests, in his book "A Judicial Control of the European Communities" that that opportunity would exist for the individual citizen. The opportunity under Article 177(b) to challenge before a member State court and, finally, before the Community Court the validity of a Community treaty would not be affected by the form of Clause 1(3) as it stands or by the Amendment.

Mr. Powell: My hon. and learned Friend has just made what seems a very important interpretation. I am looking at Article 177(b) of the treaty. Do I understand my hon. and learned Friend to be saying that the validity of measures taken by the institutions of the Community—the words in Article 177(b)—would cover the question raised by the Amendment whether a treaty was a treaty for the purposes of Clause 1?

The Solicitor-General: It will cover the question whether a treaty was or was not made validly by the Community institutions. A challenge could be brought, whether the treaty was validly made within the powers conferred upon the Community institutions, under Article 177(b). I do not want to go further than I should, because there is no case law so establishing it. However, it is the fairly well argued conclusion of Gerhard Bebr, in the book to which I have referred, that that is so.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Is my hon. and learned Friend certain about this proposition? Looking at Article 177(a) and (b) he will see that there is a clear differentiation or dichotomy in language. The part relating to treaties, which is the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) which is germane to the Amendment, uses the word "interpretation" only. The validity comes under Article 177(b). Is it not right that there is a lesser jurisdiction regarding treaties which might not extend to this point, because of the difference of that language? Has my hon. and learned Friend considered that in the context of Article 177?

The Solicitor-General: I take my right hon. and learned Friend's point. Article 177(b) gives the court jurisdiction to give rulings on
the validity and interpretation of acts of the institutions".
We are categorising a treaty under that article as an act whose validity could be considered.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: What I am suggesting —

The Solicitor-General: Perhaps I may finish the exposition. I am not asserting that Article 177 has yet, on the case


law of the European Court, been used to determine the validity or otherwise of a treaty made by the Community institutions. I am asserting that there are what seem to be reasonably well founded arguments to that effect in Gerhard Bebr's book at pages 54 and 187. Perhaps my right hon. and learned Friend might like to consider the matter further in that way.
I come now to the Amendment. The Bill as it stands provides that if an Order in Council is made declaring
that a treaty specified in the Order is to be regarded as one of the Community Treaties as herein defined, the Order shall be conclusive".
I suggest that Amendment No. 127 is unnecessary if it is supposed that Clause 1(3) enables the Government to make an Order in Council declaring some quite unconnected treaty applicable under these provisions. As I explained when we discussed this matter on two occasions last week, 7th and 8th March, it is clear that the validity of an Order in Council of that kind could be challenged and that the power of the courts to examine the vires of the order would still remain along the lines which I discussed last week.
As the Bill stands, a treaty specified in the order must be reasonably capable of being within the scope of the definition of Community treaties since the power is to declare
that a treaty…is to be regarded as one of the Community treaties as herein defined".
This follows from the whole structure of the first part of Clause 1.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) asked about the meaning and significance of the word "ancillary" in the latter part of subsection (2). I respond to him by saying that "ancillary" is more likely to be given the narrow rather than the broad construction; in other words, the construction which he suggested. My right hon. Friend tended to suggest that, in response to questions last week, I indicated that an extension of the rôle of the Communities would be undertaken by making treaty after treaty linking on to the last one. I think that the question was "could it be" rather than "would it be". I suggested that, to certain limits at least, it could be

done provided that each treaty was properly regarded as ancillary in that way. I certainly do not suggest that it would be done because obviously one of the alternatives would remain—the opportunity of using legislation rather than an Order in Council as being more appropriate in any significant or substantial cases.

Mr. Jay: If I understood aright, the Solicitor-General said it was quite clear that a treaty under subsection (3) must be within the scope of the Community treaties. That is not clear to me anywhere in the Bill and it is certainly not in any of the words of subsection (3). Subsection (3) does not say "if an Order in Council specifies a treaty as herein defined to be a Community treaty"; it says "if it declares a treaty to be a treaty as herein defined." There is nothing, so far as I can see, and the Solicitor-General has not told us anything, which limits the treaties that can be declared in that way to be Community treaties.

The Solicitor-General: It is on that ground that the vires of an Order in Council could be challenged if it sought to give the status of a Community treaty to something which could not and should not be regarded as a Community treaty "as herein defined." We come back then to the phrase about which my right hon. Friend was asking me. So I suggest that this argument has been covered at least twice and there is no need to make the change suggested by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West.

Mr. Jay: I think there is—

The Temporary Chairman (Sir Alfred Broughton): The right hon. Gentleman must not interrupt if the Solicitor-General will not give way.

Mr. Jay: On a point of order, Sir Alfred. We are in Committee and this is an extremely important point. Surely it would be normal for the hon. and learned Gentleman to allow this point to be cleared up and not to refuse to give way—because he does not know the answer.

The Temporary Chairman: That is not a point of order for the Chair. If the hon. and learned Gentleman will not give way, the right hon. Member must not interrupt.

Mr. John Mendelson: On a point of order. It will quickly become a point of order for the Chair. It is my experience in Committees upstairs, Sir Alfred, that the Minister responsible for an important piece of legislation always extends to the Committee the normal courtesy of allowing himself to be interrupted by hon. Members who make serious points. We are not going to take it if that courtesy is not shown to hon. Members in this Committee.

The Temporary Chairman: That is not a point of order for the Chair.

Mr. Laurie Pavitt: On a point of order, Sir Alfred. In the event of the hon. and learned Gentleman not giving way, and since we are in Committee, is my right hon. Friend entitled to intervene at a later stage and will the hon. and learned Gentleman have a chance of replying?

The Temporary Chairman: When the hon. and learned Gentleman has completed his speech, if the right hon. Member rises and is fortunate enough to catch my eye, he will be able to speak.

Mr. Jay: On a point of order. Would it not be far more expeditious, Sir Alfred, to clear up this point now?

The Temporary Chairman: That is not a point of order for the Chair.

Mr. Molloy: Not only was the dialogue we were listening to between the Solicitor-General and my right hon. Friend interesting, but if it could have been followed it might have been informative. I understand that that is the purpose of a Committee stage. I did not follow precisely the very pertinent point my right hon. Friend was making and I wanted to listen very carefully because I was absorbed and wanted to know what the reply of the Solicitor-General would be. I understand that that is the purpose of the Committee stage, and perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will take cognisance of my words.

The Temporary Chairman: The hon. Gentleman is putting forward an interesting personal opinion, not a point of order for the Chair.

The Solicitor-General: The hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson) will know that I am not unwilling to give

way and to answer questions as far as I properly should but, as I have said, I have dealt with that point on at least two previous occasions and I cannot now deal with it any further.

Mr. Jay: On a point of order—

The Temporary Chairman: The right hon. Gentleman must not interrupt if the hon. and learned Solicitor-General is not prepared to give way.

6.15 p.m.

The Solicitor-General: Coming to Amendment No. 72, on which we have had only a sentence or two of explanation, the insertion of the words there suggested would have the opposite effect from that desired by hon. Members opposite. By inserting the words "or is" the scope of a valid or legitimate Order in Council would appear to be broadened so that it would not only extend to the case where the treaty is but would add a distinct category—a treaty which is to be regarded as one of the Community treaties. I suggest that an extension of that kind is unnecessary and unjustifiable.
I invite the Committee to say that the third Amendment, No. 178, is neither necessary nor desirable. So far as pre-accession treaties are concerned, there would be no purpose in including a provision for annulment in that way because it would not prevent pre-accession treaties falling within the terms of the definition. So far as that Amendment concerns future treaties entered into by the United Kingdom, the second part of Clause 1(3) already provides that an Order in Council must be made if the treaty is to be within the definition, and in that case the Order in Council requires an affirmative Resolution. So it would be quite otiose and pointless to provide for it to be subject to annulment as well. So far as future treaties entered into by the Community without member States are concerned, such treaties are included by definition in Clause 1(2) whether or not there is a declaratory order under the first part of Clause 1(3). So to provide for annulment in that way would not affect the substance of that. I therefore invite the Committee to conclude that not one of these three Amendments would justify its place in the Bill.

Mr. English: The hon. and learned Gentleman said that he was not going


to answer at this stage the points I raised about the law of treaties, but he went further and did not answer the small point I made suggesting that quite validly within the scope of the Bill something like the Heath-Pompidou agreement could be declared a Community treaty by Order in Council. That point ought to be answered as it does not directly concern the law of treaties.

Mr. Jay: I thought that perhaps the Solicitor-General wished to answer the question addressed to him by my hon. Friend, but on the assumption that that is not so I will put some further points to him. It is unfortunate if the Solicitor-General refuses to answer questions in their logical order when we are pursuing a point in dispute. This will prolong the proceedings because we have to go back to the point and explain to the Committee what is under discussion.
The Solicitor-General seemed to me to show the weakness of his case today because once again he had to start his speech not by relating an argument of his own but by referring back at some length to speeches made by other people three, four or five years ago. I do not think that enhanced the strength of his speech.
We have got one point at any rate clear about the Clause. It is not, as was originally suggested and as the Bill states, a Short Title or interpretation or definition Clause; it is a Clause which has substantial effects as legislation in making these treaties binding on the country. The fact that a Clause with that substantial effect was presented to us as being merely a definition Clause will rightly make us somewhat suspicious and exacting in our examination of other areas of the Bill.
A point which, it seems to me, the Solicitor-General—who has far more information about this than I, and that is why I thought he would be able to answer my questions—did not deal with the question he has been asked several times: what is there to prevent the Government, under subsection (3), declaring to be a Community treaty a treaty which is not a Community treaty at all? The Government may have no intention of doing that. The Solicitor-General may not intend the Bill to give that power to the present Government or any future

Government. The fact remains that it appears to many of us that there is nothing in the Clause to prevent the Government from so doing.
The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) in his intervention referred to the words
a treaty ancillary to any of the Treaties".
Those words occur in subsection (2), and there is nothing grammatically or logically in the Clause to necessitate the words "a treaty" in line 11 being limited or qualified by those words in subsection (2). It may be the general intention that they should be, but subsection (3) says:
If Her Majesty by Order in Council declares that a treaty specified in the Order is to be regarded as one of the Community Treaties as herein defined, the Order shall be conclusive that it is to be so regarded".
The Government might have meant to say:
If Her Majesty by Order in Council declares that a treaty within the definition in subsection (2) to be regarded as one of the Community Treaties as herein defined",
That would have been one way of doing it, but that is not what the subsection says.
If the Government were to introduce a Bill which said:
If Her Majesty declares the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) to be the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West",
that would for legal purposes have one effect. If, on the other hand, they introduced a Bill which said:
If Her Majesty by Order in Council declares any Member of Parliament to be the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West",
that would have a totally different effect.
Do the Government intend that subsection (3) should give future Governments the power to declare any treaty whatever, whether it be a treaty made by the Community or by the United Kingdom either in the past or in the future, to be a Community treaty when it is no such thing? If the Government do not mean to say that, I suggest to the Solicitor-General that it would be wise to accept one or other of these Amendments—perhaps my hon. Friend's wording is not ideal—to make it clear that only genuine Community treaties, somehow appropriately defined, can be treated in this way.
We are discussing whether a treaty, so declared, shall be binding on the courts and on the people of this country. This is a substantial matter, because if the Government really intend to bring in other treaties my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) would not be right in saying that this is merely window dressing. This would be a substantial Clause, giving power far beyond what the House of Commons has been told and far beyond what any of us would wish to give.

Mr. Spearing: Will my right hon. Friend look in Hansard tomorrow and check the words of the Solicitor-General? My hearing of his phrase, before the exchange with my right hon. Friend, was that the Solicitor-General meant to imply that the meaning of the subsection was as my hon. Friend suggested the Government wished it to be and not as it is. The Solicitor-General, has said things have later turned out not to be what they appeared to be.

Mr. Jay: I will certainly study Hansard tomorrow. Today, however, I am trying to understand the Clause as it is.
I understood the Solicitor-General in his first and second replies on this point to say that a Government could, under the Clause, declare a treaty to be a Community treaty when it was not. He said that that would not matter because it could be challenged in the courts. Speaking to the hon. and learned Gentleman diffidently, because I am not a legal expert, I would like him to explain what that means. It means, presumably, that a citizen may go to the courts and challenge a Government who have by order declared to be a Community treaty a treaty which is not to be a Community treaty.
If the Bill were passed into law in its present form, a citizen who went to court would be faced by a spokesman for the Government who would present the Bill to say that Her Majesty, by Order in Council, had declared that a treaty specified in the order was to be regarded as one of the Community treaties as therein defined, and that that was conclusive that it should be so regarded. What would be the purpose of raising the matter in court if one were presented

with an Act of Parliament which said conclusively that one was wrong? I do not understand the point of putting into the Bill the words
shall be conclusive that it is to be so regarded".
We ought to have an answer to this before we leave the Clause.
The other question which has not been answered was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). Could a Government declare a treaty to be a Community treaty for the purpose of the Bill even though that treaty had never been published? My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale spoke earlier about the arcane proceedings of this Parliament. As the Council of Ministers in Brussels and the Commission meet and legislate in secret, and as the House of Commons legislates in public, I would have thought it was those institutions rather than this Parliament which should be described as arcane. Would it be possible for a treaty to be made in secret in one of those Community institutions and not to be published and for the Government to issue an Order in Council declaring that that specified but unpublished treaty was a Community treaty for the purposes of the Bill and that, therefore, its contents were binding upon the country?
It is noticeable to those of us who are trying to understand the Bill that subsection (3) states that if Parliament
declares that a treaty specified in the Order".
It does not speak of a treaty included in the order or set out or contained in the order. It says "specified in the Order". If one referred, for instance, to the Luxembourg compromise—I do not know whether that ranks as an agreement or treaty for the purposes of the Bill—would it be possible merely to specify an agreement by name without including any of the contents and for that, as a result, to be validly described as and declared to be a Community treaty?
The whole situation is exceedingly unsatisfactory. Under the Clause, unless we have words to the contrary, it would be possible for a Government to include by name in an Order in Council a treaty which might not be a Community treaty at all, which might never have been published unless Parliament rejected the


order. All these legal consequences would follow. I cannot believe that that is what the Government intend. If they do not intend this, surely we should amend the Clause, by one of these Amendments or another, in such a way that at the very least the provisions of the Clause are limited to what are genuine Community treaties as defined in the previous subsection. The words of the Bill manifestly do not carry out that intention.
It is exceedingly undesirable in a matter of this importance to have such vagueness, imprecision and ambiguity. While seeking information, I invite the Solicitor-General to explain, if I am wrong, where I am wrong and, if I am right, to say how the Government intend to amend the Bill to ensure that it at least carries out their intentions.

6.30 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I fear that my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) will be disappointed, for I doubt whether the Solicitor-General intends to explain anything.
The hon. and learned Gentleman treated us last week to a long playing record which led to a state of total confusion; the longer he went on playing it, the less clear the situation became. Today he played a single disc version, but so dismissive were his remarks that we know even less now than we did when we began discussing this issue.
The Solicitor-General was given an opportunity to explain how the rights and privileges of this Parliament were not being overridden. Instead of doing that, he simply said, "We have heard all this before. I do not intend to reply to it again". The hon. and learned Gentleman dismissed the Committee and put our rights on one side by saying, in effect, "Like it or lump it, we have a majority and we intend to shove the Bill through".
It is clear that this Measure is bound to do a lot of damage during its passage through Parliament. Already the reputation of the Solicitor-General has gone. I regret that, because previously he seemed to take a lot of trouble to explain various provisions with clarity and in detail. On this occasion, however, he has had such a bad brief that instead

of abusing his opponents he has abused Parliament, and he stands condemned for so doing.
The hon. and learned Gentleman brushed aside Amendment No. 178, describing it as neither necessary nor desirable. I suppose that if one is engaged in pulling wool over people's eyes it could be considered unnecessary and undesirable, but from our point of view it is both necessary and desirable if it will help us to learn the facts.
One fact we are anxious to learn is precisely what is a treaty. The Bill should at least tell us that simple point. Apparently a treaty is a great deal more than the Treaty of Rome. We had hoped to elucidate in debating Amendment No. 178 precisely what the Government have in mind when they use the word "treaty". At a later stage we may be able to pursue this matter.
Presumably a treaty includes any international agreement. In other words, we are discussing not only the Treaty of Rome but treaties arising from it. These are treaties which have already arisen and future treaties which will stem from the original Treaty of Rome. For example, Article 114 of the Treaty setting up the European Economic Community states:
The agreements referred to in Article 111(2) and in Article 113 shall be concluded by the Council on behalf of the Community, acting unanimously during the first two stages and thereafter by qualified majority.
When one turns to Article 111(2) one reads:
The Commission shall submit to the Council recommendations concerning tariff negotiations with third countries in respect of the common customs tariff. The Council shall authorise the Commission to open such negotiations.
After referring to what happens then, Article 111(4) says:
Member States shall, in consultation with the Commission, take all necessary measures to adjust, in particular, tariff agreements in force with third countries in order that the coming into force of the common customs tariff should not be delayed.
This seems to open the possibility that member States may conduct negotiations with third countries for which we are responsible; countries in the Commonwealth or countries for which we have direct responsibility. Included in this category of treaties could be all sorts of trade agreements with underdeveloped


and dependent Commonwealth territories, and it seems that they could be made not only by the Community as a whole but by individual member States.

The Solicitor-General: The Solicitor-General rose—

Mr. Jenkins: I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will make the position clear, for it seems that by Article 111(4)
Member States
may
in consultation with the Commission"—
make various
tariff agreements…with third countries
and it seems that they could be underdeveloped or dependent Commonwealth territories and that that could happen without the knowledge, consent and agreement of this country. Is this so?

The Solicitor-General: To save the hon. Gentleman the trouble of pursuing the point, it might help if I were to explain that the whole of Article 111 applies to measures that were to be effective during the transitional period of the original Community; this is now entirely spent and has no bearing on the situation.

Mr. Jenkins: Let us hope that we can take the hon. and learned Gentleman's assurance as gospel. There have been previous contradictions between his statements and the wording of the Bill. At least I hope we have ascertained that one precious fact. Perhaps we should ring it round in HANSARD as a solid statement on to which we can hang. I trust that it will not be contradicted later.
On another occasion I shall pursue the whole question of secondary legislation and question to what extent that, too, is a treaty. There seems to be a stage between the treaty itself and the secondary legislation, which it is said is not a treaty, though it looks rather like a treaty. In other words, it seems that the intermediate governing provisions do not constitute a treaty while the secondary legislation does. We can debate this at greater length on later Amendments.
I have said enough to show how important it is for my right hon. and hon. Friends to stress the necessity of unearthing from the Solicitor-General what facts we can ascertain. If we have unearthed a

tiny fact as a result of debating this Amendment, then we have proved the need to press and press still further our demand to know precisely what the situation will be under this legislation.

Mr. Anthony Fell: I rise first to profoundly disagree with the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins) that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General has lost his reputation in the Committee. Not only was that a wild statement but it bore no relation to the truth.
I rise secondly to ask my hon. and learned Friend, for whom I and virtually the whole Committee have not only affection but the greatest possible respect, to attempt in his future dealings with the Bill to remember that a lot of us have no connection with or experience of the law. I mention that because some of the to-ing and fro-ing today between himself and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), and the interventions and the replies of the Solicitor-General, were extremely difficult to follow. That was shown to be so because it was obvious from the attitudes of both my right hon. Friends towards the Solicitor-General's replies that they did not quite understand either. It was fairly obvious that my right hon. and learned Friend was unable to put it into words that could be easily understood.
What I appeal about is this. We shall have endless discussions on the Bill. Somehow, those of us who are least versed in legal matters have to be convinced by the Solicitor-General, when it is his job so to do, that what he is saying is so. Somehow he has to make us understand what he is getting at.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: I suggest that the only difference between the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) and myself in this matter is that he thinks that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General is trying to make himself clear and failing to do so whereas I think that he is really not trying.

Mr. Fell: The hon. Member may think what he likes. One thing is certain: my hon. and learned Friend has to deal not just with the Opposition, which is mixed anyway—we all know that—but also with


his friendly opposition on this side of the Committee. On a Bill of as great moment as this is to the future of democracy in Britain and the future of Parliament—an opinion shared by everyone—somehow my hon. and learned Friend has the mammoth task of carrying us all through the legislation and leaving us knowing exactly what he is getting at, what every Clause means and the reason why every Amendment he decides to reject is being rejected. The Bill has to become credible to those of us least versed in legal affairs.
Finally, of all Committee stages that I have had anything to do with—it is not all that many, but a fair number—in many ways this is the one where there has to be the most detailed consideration. We want to be absolutely certain that if the Bill is passed it leaves nothing to be desired in the way of protection of the House of Commons.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Ronald King Murray: The hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) made a powerful plea. I hope that it will not fall on deaf ears. The Opposition are entirely dissatisfied with the way in which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General has handled these Amendments. I am inclined to say that he has handled the Committee in a cavalier fashion. I may return to that point in my concluding remarks. I propose to deal simply with Amendment No. 72, one of those which was so readily cast aside by the Solicitor-General.
When the debate opened the Opposition were in some doubt as to whether the Government might possibly be attempting to operate subsection (3)—I am concerned with the first part in particular—on the basis that they had no obligation to use subsection (3) procedure for publication of a treaty, that is, for evidencing a Community-type treaty where it plainly was a Community treaty. It might be said that there is no need to proclaim and declare that a treaty which obviously is a Community treaty is to be regarded as one of the Community treaties.
These worst fears have been confirmed by the Solicitor-General. It turns out that the Government intend to operate in this bare-faced fashion. In view of that fact, it is right that I should dwell on

the significance of Amendment No. 72 and commend it strongly to the Committee. Its effect would be to make explicit one of the contradictory stands taken by the Solicitor-General on this matter when he opened an earlier debate. He explained that subsection (3) procedure was intended to be used where a treaty was a Community treaty or was to be regarded as a Community treaty.
That is directly contrary to what he has said today. Therefore, the Committee should attend very carefully to Amendment No. 72. It would simply add the words "or is", so that we would be dealing, in this subsection, with treaties which are Community treaties or are to be regarded as Community treaties. The Amendment has much in common with that moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), with which the Opposition entirely agree.
I ask the Committee to look briefly at what the words "is to be regarded" mean. They are much the same as the word "deemed". Mr. Justice Cave, in the case of Queen v. Norfolk County Council, has said authoritatively, in pithy and relevant words, that a thing deemed to be something else is not that other thing.
The Solicitor-General cannot get away with it. He is on record in two contradictory senses, and he must clear this up.
I pass to another point and pick up a point dropped by my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), who said that there is no necessary connection, such as the Solicitor-General seems to assume, between the passage at lines 5 to 8 on page 2 and subsection (3) with which we are dealing. The word "ancillary" was stressed by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I want to return to that matter. The right hon. Member made a powerful point about it. But it is important for the Committee to realise that there are no words in subsection (3) nor, as far as I can see, anywhere else in the Bill, to connect up to make a necessary connection between the procedure of subsection (3) and the passage in lines 5 to 8 which has given rise to so many of the troubles of the Committee.
It is all very well to say, for example, that the shield—if shield it be—of subsection (3) can be used to protect parliamentary procedure in regard to ancillary treaties. But if the shield of subsection (3) virtually allows ratification of treaties which are far beyond ancillary treaties, it will not be a shield but simply another weapon or instrument to disarm the power of Parliament and to remove its sovereignty.
I take up the point about the meaning of the word "ancillary". I have been able to find some law on this matter at short notice. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is right that in ordinary language something of the order of being subordinate to a thing would be said to be ancillary, if it assisted something else or was subordinate to something else. It seems to have that flavour in ordinary language. But, in law, the word "ancillary" has been construed, in the case of Smith v. Smith, 1925, 2 King's Bench, as being equivalent to "supplemental", and in the case of Green v. Britten, 1904, 1 King's Bench, as meaning "auxiliary". So these legal meanings would seem to be on the same lines as the line of thought of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-

West. But, as a matter of etymology, we should not forget that the word "ancillary" is derived from the word "ancilla", meaning a maidservant. Perhaps it is one of those unknown factors the Government are to operate as a maid of all work. Perhaps they will make it mean what they want it to mean when it suits them, and something different when they have a different purpose.

Indeed we begin to wonder and the more we look into words like "ancillary" and the more that bland assumptions are made that there is a necessary connection between subsection (3) and the offending and obnoxious passage in lines 5 to 8, the more we want to probe the meaning of words like "ancillary". I cannot help feeling that perhaps in the end "ancillary" is one of those words which will be used to make Parliament the handmaiden of the Communities.

Mr. Jay: Mr. Jay rose—

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Pym): The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Pym) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 230, Noes 205.

Division No. 84.]
AYES
[6.50 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Clegg, Walter
Goodhart, Philip


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Cockeram, Eric
Goodhew, Victor


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Cooke, Robert
Gower, Raymond


Astor, John
Coombs, Derek
Gray, Hamish


Atkins, Humphrey
Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Green, Alan


Awdry, Daniel
Cormack, Patrick
Grieve, Percy


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Costain, A. P.
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)


Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord
Critchley, Julian
Grylls, Michael


Batsford, Brian
Crouch, David
Gummer, J. Selwyn


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Gurden, Harold


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Hall, John (Wycombe)


Benyon, W.
Dean, Paul
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Dixon, Piers
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)


Biggs-Davison, John
Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Hannam, John (Exeter)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester S.W.)
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)


Boscawen, Robert
Dykes, Hugh
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)


Bossom, Sir Clive
Eden, Sir John
Haselhurst, Alan


Bowden, Andrew
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Havers, Michael


Bray, Ronald
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Hawkins, Paul


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Hay, John


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Emery, Peter
Heseltine, Michael


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Eyre, Reginald
Hicks, Robert


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Farr, John
Higgins, Terence L.


Bryan, Paul
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Hiley, Joseph


Buck, Antony
Fidler, Michael
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Holland, Philip


Burden, F. A.
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Holt, Miss Mary


Campbell Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Hordern, Peter


Carlisle, Mark
Fookes, Miss Janet
Hornby, Richard


Channon, Paul
Fox, Marcus
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia


Chapman, Sydney
Fry, Peter
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Gibson-Watt, David
Howell, David (Guildford)


Churchill, W. S.
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Hunt, John


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Jessel, Toby




Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Montgomery, Fergus
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)


Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Speed, Keith


Jopling, Michael
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Spence, John


Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Morrison, Charles
Sproat, Iain


Kellelt-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Murton, Oscar
Stainton, Keith


Kershaw, Anthony
Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Stanbrook, Ivor


Kilfedder, James
Neave, Airey
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Kimball, Marcus
Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Normanton, Tom
Stokes, John


Kinsey, J. R.
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Kirk, Peter
Osborn, John
Taylor, Edward M. (G' gow, Cathcart)


Knox, David
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Lane, David
Page, John (Harrow, W.)
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)


Langford-Holt, Sir John
Parkinson, Cecil
Tebbit, Norman


Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Peel, John
Temple, John M.


Le Merchant, Spencer
Pike, Miss Mervyn
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Pounder, Rafton
Tilney, John


Lloyd, Ian (P' tsm'th, Langstone)
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Trew, Peter


Longden, Sir Gilbert
Proudfoot, Wilfred
Tugendhat, Christopher


Loveridge, John
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Luce, R. N.
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


MacArthur, Ian
Redmond, Robert
Waddington, David


McCrindle, R. A.
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


McLaren, Martin
Rees, Peter (Dover)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Walters, Dennis


McMaster, Stanley
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Ward, Dame Irene


Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Weatherill, Bernard


McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Mather, Carol
Ridsdale, Julian
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Maude, Angus
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Wilkinson, John


Mawby, Ray
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Winterton, Nicholas


Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Rost, Peter
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Russell, Sir Ronald
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C. (Aberdeenshire, W)
Sharples, Richard
Woodnutt, Mark


Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)
Younger, Hn. George


Moate, Roger
Shelton, William (Clapham)



Money, Ernle
Simeons, Charles
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Monks, Mrs. Connie
Sinclair, Sir George
Mr. Tim Fortescue and Mr. John Stradling Thomas.


Monro, Hector
Skeet, T. H. H.





NOES


Abse, Leo
Dalyell, Tam
Hannan, William (G' gow, Maryhill)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Hardy, Peter


Allen, Scholefield
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Heffer, Eric S.


Armstrong, Ernest
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Hooson, Emlyn


Ashley, Jack
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Horam, John


Atkinson, Norman
Deakins, Eric
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Dempsey, James
Huckfield, Leslie


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Doig, Peter
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)


Baxter, William
Dormand, J. D.
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Hunter, Adam


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)


Bidwell, Sydney
Driberg, Tom
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Bishop, E. S.
Eadie, Alex
Jeger, Mrs. Lena


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)


Booth, Albert
English, Michael
John, Brynmor


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Evans, Fred
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)


Bradley, Tom
Ewing, Henry
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)


Brown Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Faulds, Andrew
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)


Buchan, Norman
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp 'burn)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)


Cant, R. B.
Foot, Michael
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)


Carmichael, Neil
Ford, Ben
Judd, Frank


Carter, Ray (Birmingh 'm, Northfield)
Forrester, John
Kaufman, Gerald


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Kelley, Richard


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Freeson, Reginald
Kerr, Russell


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Gilbert, Dr. John
Lambie, David


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Lamond, James


Coleman, Donald
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Latham, Arthur


Concannon, J. D.
Grant, George (Morpeth)
Leadbitter, Ted


Conlan, Bernard
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Lestor, Miss Joan


Cronin, John
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Hamling, William








Lomas, Kenneth
Oram, Bert
Skinner, Dennis


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Orbach, Maurice
Small, William


Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Orme, Stanley
Spearing, Nigel


Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Paget, R. T.
Spriggs, Leslie


McBride, Neil
Palmer, Arthur
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


McCann, John
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


McElhone, Frank
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Strang, Gavin


McGuire, Michael
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Swain, Thomas


Mackenzie, Gregor
Pavitt, Laurie
Taverne, Dick


Mackie, John
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Maclennan, Robert
Pendry, Tom
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Pentland, Norman
Tinn, James


Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Perry, Ernest G.
Tomney, Frank


Marks, Kenneth
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Tuck, Raphael


Marquand, David
Prescott, John
Urwin, T. W.


Marsden, F.
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Varley, Eric G.


Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Price, William (Rugby)
Wainwright, Edwin


Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Probert, Arthur
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Meacher, Michael
Rankin, John
Wallace, George


Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Weitzman, David


Mendelson, John
Rhodes, Geoffrey
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Millan, Bruce
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Whitehead, Phillip


Miller, Dr. M. S.
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Whitlock, William


Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br 'c' n&amp;R' dnor)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Roper, John
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Moyle, Roland
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Woof, Robert


Murray, Ronald King
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)



Oakes, Gordon
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Ogden, Eric
Sillars, James
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


O' Malley, Brian
Silverman, Julius

Question put accordingly, That the Amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 205, Noes 225.

Division No. 85.]
AYES
[7.2 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Hunter, Adam


Allen, Scholefield
Deakins, Eric
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Dempsey, James
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Armstrong, Ernest
Doig, Peter
Jeger, Mrs. Lena


Ashley, Jack
Dormand, J. D.
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Atkinson, Norman
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
John, Brynmor


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Driberg, Tom
Johnson, James (K' ston-on-Hull, W.)


Baxter, William
Eadle, Alex
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Bidwell, Sydney
English, Michael
Jones, Rt. Hn. SirElwyn (W. Ham, S.)


Bishop, E. S.
Evans, Fred
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Ewing, Harry
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Faulds, Andrew
Judd, Frank


Booth, Albert
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Kaufman, Gerald


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Kelley, Richard


Bradley, Tom
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Kerr, Russell


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Lambie, David


Buchan, Norman
Foot, Michael
Lamond, James


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Ford, Ben
Latham, Arthur


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Forrester, John
Leadbitter, Ted


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Cant, R. B.
Freeson, Reginald
Lestor, Miss Joan


Carmichael, Neil
Gilbert, Dr. John
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)


Carter, Ray (Birmingham, Northfield)
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Lomas, Kenneth


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Grant, George (Morpeth)'
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Cohen, Stanley
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
McBride, Neil


Coleman, Donald
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
McCann, John


Concannon, J. D.
Hamling, William
McElhone, Frank


Conlan, Bernard
Hannan, William (G' gow, Maryhill)
McGuire, Michael


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Hardy, Peter
Mackenzie, Gregor


Cronin, John
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mackie, John


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Heffer, Eric S.
Maclennan, Robert


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Hooson, Emlyn
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)




Dalyell, Tam
Horam, John
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Marks, Kenneth


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Huckfield, Leslie
Marquand, David


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Marsden, F.




Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Pentland, Norman
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Perry, Ernest G.
Strang, Gavin


Meacher, Michael
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Swain, Thomas


Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Prescott, John
Taverne, Dick


Mendelson, John
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Millan, Bruce
Price, William (Rugby)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Miller, Dr. M. S.
Probert, Arthur
Tinn, James


Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Rankin, John
Tomney, Frank


Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Tuck, Raphael


Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Urwin, T. W.


Moyle, Roland
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Varley, Eric G.


Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Wainwright, Edwin


Murray, Ronald King
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br 'c' n&amp;R' dnor)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Oakes, Gordon
Roper, John
Wallace, George


Ogden, Eric
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)
Weitzman, David


O'Malley, Brian
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Oram, Bert
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Whitlock, William


Orbach, Maurice
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Orme, Stanley
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Paget, R. T.
Sillars, James
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Palmer, Arthur
Silverman, Julius
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Skinner, Dennis
Woof, Robert


Parker, John (Dagenham)
Small, William



Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Spearing, Nigel
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Pavitt, Laurie
Spriggs, Leslie
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


Peart, Rt. Hon. Fred
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)



Pendry, Tom






NOES


Adley, Robert
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle upon-Tyne, N.)
Jopling, Michael


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Emery, Peter
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith


Astor, John
Eyre, Reginald
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine


Atkins, Humphrey
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Kershaw, Anthony


Awdry, Daniel
Fidler, Michael
Kimball, Marcus


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Batsford, Brian
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Kinsey, J. R.


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Fookes, Miss Janet
Kirk, Peter


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Fox, Marcus
Knox, David


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Fry, Peter
Lane, David


Benyon, W.
Gibson-Watt, David
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Biggs-Davison, John
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Le Marchant, Spencer


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Boscawen, Robert
Goodhart, Philip
Lloyd, Ian (P 'tsm' th, Langstone)


Bossom, Sir Clive
Goodhew, Victor
Longden, Sir Gilbert


Bowden, Andrew
Gower, Raymond
Loveridge, John


Bray, Ronald
Gray, Hamish
Luce, R. N.


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Green, Alan
MacArthur, Ian


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Grieve, Percy
McCrindle, R. A.


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
McLaren, Martin


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Grylls, Michael
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Bryan, Paul
Gummer, J. Selwyn
McMaster, Stanley


Buck, Antony
Gurden, Harold
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)


Burden, F. A.
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Mather, Carol


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Maude, Angus


Carlisle, Mark
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Channon, Paul
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Mawby, Ray


Chapman, Sydney
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Churchill, W. S.
Haselhurst, Alan
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Havers, Michael
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hawkins, Paul
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Clegg, Walter
Hay, John
Money, Ernle


Cockeram, Eric
Heseltine, Michael
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Cooke, Robert
Hicks, Robert
Monro, Hector


Coombs, Derek
Higgins, Terence L.
Montgomery, Fergus


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Hiley, Joseph
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Cormack, Patrick
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Costain, A. P.
Holland, Philip
Morrison, Charles


Critchley, Julian
Holt, Miss Mary
Murton, Oscar


Crouch, David
Hordern, Peter
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Hornby, Richard
Neave, Airey


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Normanton, Tom


Dean, Paul
Howell, David (Guildford)
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Dixon, Piers
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Osborn, John


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Hunt, John
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Jessel, Toby
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Eden, Sir John
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pardoe, John


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Parkinson, Cecil







Peel, John
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Trew, Peter


Pike, Miss Mervyn
Simeons, Charles
Tugendhat, Christopher


Pounder, Rafton
Sinclair, Sir George
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Skeet, T. H. H.
Waddington, David


Proudfoot, Wilfred
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Speed, Keith
Walters, Dennis


Quennell, Miss J. M.
Spence, John
Ward, Dame Irene


Redmond, Robert
Sproat, Iain
Weatherill, Bernard


Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)
Stainton, Keith
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Rees, Peter (Dover)
Stanbrook, Ivor
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Rees-Davies, W. R.
Steel, David
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)
Wilkinson, John


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Winterton, Nicholas


Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Ridsdale, Julian
Stokes, John
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Woodnutt, Mark


Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)
Younger, Hn. George


Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Tebbit, Norman



Rost, Peter
Temple, John M.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Russell, Sir Ronald
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Mr. Tim Fortescue and Mr. John Stradling Thomas.


Sharples, Richard
Tilney, John



Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)

Question accordingly negatived.

[Sir ROBERT GRANT-FERRIS in the Chair]

Amendment proposed:

In page 2, line 11, after 'Council' insert:

'subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament'.—[Mr. Spearing.]

Question put, That that Amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 208, Noes 221.

Division No. 86.]
AYES
[7.12 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Dormand, J. D.
John, Brynmor


Allen, Scholefield
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Johnson, James (K' ston-on-Hull, W.)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)


Armstrong, Ernest
Driberg, Tom
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)


Ashley, Jack
Eadie, Alex
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Atkinson, Norman
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
English, Michael
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)


Baxter, William
Evans, Fred
Judd, Frank


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Ewing, Harry
Kaufman, Gerald


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Farr, John
Kerr, Russell


Bidwell, Sydney
Faulds, Andrew
Lambie, David


Bishop, E. S.
Fell, Anthony
Lamond, James


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Latham, Arthur


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Leadbitter, Ted


Booth, Albert
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Lestor, Miss Joan


Bradley, Tom
Foot, Michael
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Ford, Ben
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Buchan, Norman
Forrester, John
Lomas, Kenneth


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Freeson, Reginald
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Gilbert, Dr. John
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Cant, R. B.
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
McBride, Neil


Carmichael, Neil
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
McCann, John


Carter, Ray (Birmingh' m, Northfield)
Grant, George (Morpeth)
McElhone, Frank


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
McGuire, Michael


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mackenzie, Gregor


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mackie, John


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Maclennan, Robert


Cohen, Stanley
Hamling, William
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)


Coleman, Donald
Hannan, William (G' gow, Maryhill)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)


Concannon, J. D.
Hardy, Peter
Marks, Kenneth


Conlan, Bernard
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Marquand, David


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Heffer, Eric S.
Marsden, F.


Cronin, John
Hooson, Emlyn
Marshall, Dr. Edmund


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Horam, John
Marten, Neil


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Huckfield, Leslie
Meacher, Michael


Dalyell, Tam
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Mendelson, John


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Hunter, Adam



Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Millan, Bruce


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Moate, Roger


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Dempsey, James
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Doig, Peter
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)




Moyle, Roland
Probert, Arthur
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Rankin, John
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Murray, Ronald King
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Tinn, James


Oakes, Gordon
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Tomney, Frank


Ogden, Eric
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Tuck, Raphael


O'Malley, Brian
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Oram, Bert
Roderick, CaerwynE. (Br 'c' n&amp;R' dnor)
Urwin, T. W.


Orbach, Maurice
Roper, John
Varley, Eric G.


Orme, Stanley
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)
Wainwright, Edwin


Paget, R. T.
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Palmer, Arthur
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)
Wallace, George


Parker, John (Dagenham)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Weitzman, David


Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Sillars, James
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Pavitt, Laurie
Silverman, Julius
Whitlock, William


Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Skinner, Dennis
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Pendry, Tom
Small, William
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Pentland, Norman
Spearing, Nigel
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Perry, Ernest G.
Spriggs, Leslie
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)
Woof, Robert


Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.
Stoddart, David (Swindon)



Prescott, John
Strang, Gavin
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Swain, Thomas
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


Price, William (Rugby)
Taverne, Dick





NOES


Adley, Robert
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Fookes, Miss Janet
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Fortescue, Tim
Le Merchant, Spencer


Astor, John
Fox, Marcus
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Atkins, Humphrey
Fry, Peter
Lloyd, Ian (P' tsm' th, Langstone)


Awdry, Daniel
Gibson-Watt, David
Longden, Sir Gilbert


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Loveridge, John


Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Luce, R. N.


Batsford, Brian
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
MacArthur, Ian


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Goodhart, Philip
McCrindle, R. A.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Goodhew, Victor
McLaren, Martin


Benyon, W.
Gower, Raymond
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Gray, Hamish
McMaster, Stanley


Biggs-Davison, John
Green, Alan
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Grieve, Percy
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)


Boscawen, Robert
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Mather, Carol


Bossom, Sir Clive
Grylls, Michael
Maude, Angus


Bowden, Andrew
Gummer, J. Selwyn
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Bray, Ronald
Gurden, Harold
Mawby, Ray


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Bryan, Paul
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W


Buck, Antony
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Money, Ernle


Burden, F. A.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Haselhurst, Alan
Monro, Hector


Carlisle, Mark
Havers, Michael
Montgomery, Fergus


Channon, Paul
Hawkins, Paul
Morgan, Geraint, (Denbigh)


Chapman, Sydney
Hay, John
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Heseltine, Michael
Morrison, Charles


Churchill, W. S.
Hicks, Robert
Murton, Oscar


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Higgins, Terence L.
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Cockerham, Eric
Hiley, Joseph
Neave, Airey


Cooke, Robert
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Coombs, Derek
Holland, Philip
Normanton, Tom


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Holt, Miss Mary
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Cormack, Patrick
Hordern, Peter
Osborn, John


Costain, A. P.
Hornby, Richard
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Critchley, Julian
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Crouch, David
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Pardoe, John


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Howell, David (Guildford)
Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Peel, John


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Hunt, John
Pike, Miss Mervyn


Dean, Paul
Jessel, Toby
Pounder, Rafton


Dixon, Piers
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Proudfoot, Wilfred


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward

Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Eden, Sir John
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Redmond, Robert


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Kershaw, Anthony
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Kimball, Marcus
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Emery, Peter
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Eyre, Reginald
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Kinsey, J. R.
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Fidler, Michael
Kirk, Peter
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Knox, David
Ridsdale, Julian


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Lane, David
Rippon, Rt Hn. Geoffrey







Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)
Walters, Dennis


Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Ward, Dame Irene


Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
Weatherill, Bernard


Rost, Peter
Stokes, John
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Russell, Sir Ronald
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Sharples, Richard
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)
Wilkinson, John


Shelton, William (Clapham)
Tebbit, Norman
Winterton, Nicholas


Simeons, Charles
Temple, John M.
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Sinclair, Sir George
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Skeet, T. H. H.
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)
Tilney, John
Woodnutt, Mark


Speed, Keith
Trew, Peter
Younger, Hn. George


Spence, John
Tugendhat, Christopher



Sproat, Iain
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Stainton, Keith
Waddington, David
Mr. Walter Clegg and Mr. Michael Jopling.


Stanbrook, Ivor
Walder, David (Clitheroe)



Steel, David

Question accordingly negatived.

Mr. Peter Shore: I beg to move Amendment No. 28, in page 2, line 14, leave out 'a treaty entered into by the United Kingdom' and insert:
any treaty entered into by any of the Communities, with or without any of the member States, or entered into, as a treaty ancillary to any of the treaties, by the United Kingdom'.

The Chairman: With this Amendment it will be convenient to take also Amendment No. 2, in page 2, line 15, leave out from '1972' to 'shall' in line 17, and Amendment No. 83, in page 2, leave out lines 18 to 20.

Mr. Powell: On a point of order. Would you agree, Sir Robert, that the Committee might be permitted to divide on the third of the group of three Amendments which you have indicated are being considered together, namely, Amendment No. 83? You will be aware that the point which Amendment No. 83, in my name, raises is substantially different from that raised by Amendment No. 28. Amendment No. 28 is concerned with the resolution procedure and extending its application, whereas Amendment No. 83 is concerned with the need for legislation. I hope therefore, Sir Robert, that you will give the Committee the opportunity of dividing on it.

The Chairman: Yes, I give the right hon. Gentleman an assurance that I shall allow a Division on Amendment No. 83.

Mr. Shore: Amendments Nos. 28, 2 and 83, which are brought together for discussion, are all designed to prevent the erosion of the power of the Government and Parliament to conclude trade and other treaties with other countries. They are designed to preserve for us

more adequate control over our future external relationships.
I have always believed that the external policy of the nation is very much concerned with trade and commercial policy. Indeed, the preferences that a nation can bestow upon or withhold from other countries express and determine its relationships with them. In that sense, commercial policy is often the larger part of foreign policy. Let us have no doubt about the importance of the matters with which we are dealing and how large a part commercial and trade treaties play in external policy.
Under the provisions of Clause 1(3) we are faced with a substantial loss of our present power to make commercial treaties, should we be unwise enough to join the European Communities. Indeed, there will no longer be a United Kingdom commercial policy; there will be only a Community commercial policy, and we shall have lost one of the most important and crucial powers that appertain to the business of being an independent State.
As I read Clause 1(3), the Government intend that future Community treaties—that is to say, treaties entered into by the Community directly—should not require the approval of Parliament. As we know from earlier discussions the Government make a distinction between treaties which are entered into by the Communities collectively and treaties which are entered into by the Communities and the member countries. I wish that someone could find a shorter title for those treaties. On that second group of treaties the Government by the second part of Clause 1(3) are allowing the House of Commons and Parliament to have at least the opportunity of discussing a Motion to approve an Order in Council.
We find these arrangements in Clause 1(3) wholly unacceptable and Amendments Nos. 28 and 2 are designed to bring the so-called Community treaties under the discipline of the affirmative Resolution procedure. On previous occasions we have sought to bring under strong protection treaties which fall into the second category, but no Amendment does that anything like as well as Amendment No. 83. Therefore, we shall look with great sympathy upon that Amendment.
I shall address my remarks mainly to the first category of treaties, the Community treaties which have been entered into by the Communities themselves acting on behalf of their members. We have not been very well served in these debates by the contributions of the Solicitor-General. I am sorry that he is not present because I wish to make some remarks about his contributions. Perhaps the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster can take those remarks upon himself although I think they probably fall more to his hon. and learned Friend. The Solicitor-General has not been very helpful to us and neither has the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
At the end of our previous debates we thought we had established reasonably clearly the distinction in Clause 1(3) between Community treaties and treaties which we as a member State would enter into. We also thought that we had managed to slot into those two packages certain parts of the Rome Treaty. In particular we thought we had got into the first package commercial arrangements and agreements which are to be found in Article 113 of the Rome Treaty.
We also thought that the second category of treaty which would require the affirmative Resolution of the House of Commons and the other place would include agreements and arrangements under Article 238 of the Rome Treaty. This was the distinction which hon. Members who followed these matters had firmly in their minds at the end of our proceedings last Wednesday night. But a little patient digging into the treaties produces a very different picture from that which we had been given at the end of last week's debates. I will put to the Committee the information I have and try to draw some conclusions about it.

[Mr. JOHN BREWIS in the Chair]

7.30 p.m.

Let me first take the treaties which come under the heading of Article 113 and which broadly relate to trade treaties. The greater part of those treaties are those entered into by the Communities without the direct participation of the member States. To some extent that group of treaties fits into the slot of Article 113 or subsection (3)A of the Clause. But it is not a complete fit because one of the treaties—and there is no reason why it should be treated differently—is the Agreement on Trade and Technical Co-operation signed with the Lebanon in 1968. For reasons that I hope the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will explain, the treaty with the Lebanon—unlike the treaties with Spain, Israel, the Argentine and certain other countries, including Yugoslavia—was signed not only by the people representing the Communities but by each of the member States. I cannot pretend that I know the answer to this question, but it is important we should be told and I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will enlighten us in his reply.

I turn to the much more serious anomaly which is contained in the package of treaties under Article 238. Those treaties were thought to be much more substantial than simply trade treaties—although in fact the trade treaties themselves are not insubstantial, which is a point I shall be taking up later.

The fact is that association treaties under Article 238 were thought to be of broader importance than trade treaties which are limited to the simple business of the exchange of goods. What we find under this heading is that five treaties have been concluded. I hope the Committee will be patient with me over this matter, since it is difficult to understand.

The association treaty with Greece, which was signed in July, 1961, and the association agreement with Turkey, signed in 1963, were dealt with under article 238 and were signed by the six member States, as well as by the Communities, namely by the President of the Commission and by the President of the Council. There are two other treaties, one with Tunis, which was signed in March, 1969, and the other with Morocco, which was signed in the same month of the same year, both of which


are association agreements under Article 238. However those treaties are not signed by the member States but are signed only by the President of the Commission and by the President of the Council. They are Community treaties under subsection (3)A and there is in no sense a match with the categories established and with the explanations given by the Treasury Bench during the earlier discussions.

Because this matter is important, and because I do not wish to misunderstand what has been said by the Government, I should like to remind the Committee of what the Solicitor-General told us on 8th March when dealing with certain Commonwealth countries. He said:
Of course, if they were to take up the option in Article 238"—
that is, to become associated with the Community—
that would be an association agreement of the kind requiring unanimity"—
that is, the internal procedure—
and would then be subject to the procedure that we have discussed in relation to a treaty in which the United Kingdom was participating.

The Solicitor-General was absolutely explicit in saying that it would be a treaty under the affirmative Resolution procedure and approval under Clause 1(3)(b)—that is what the Solicitor-General told us, and that is what we went to bed with last Wednesday night. To make the matter absolutely clear, when interrogated by the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton), the Solicitor-General said:
I have made it plain that under Article 238 there would be the interposition of the United Kingdom parliamentary process."—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1546–7.]
The hon. and learned Gentleman said the same thing again at c. 1549 because the Solicitor-General, like many other hon. Members, including myself, can be repetitive when he is bent on emphasising a point. He hammered the point home.

We thought we knew at the end of that discussion where we were, and therefore, we now find ourselves in great difficulty. We have been given these assurances that association agreements under Article 238 would be agreements which would come into effect only if all the member States,

including the United Kingdom, signed and that the act of our signing would automatically bring with it the subsec-section (3) B provision in which treaties would require approval of the House of Commons. That is what we were told, but it turns out to be untrue. We have the two association agreements of 1969, under Article 238, which were not signed by the member States and which automatically fall outside the check and scope of the subsection (3)B provisions. There may be a simple and sensible explanation. I am saying that as it stands it is an obvious anomaly, and I hope that when the Minister replies he will enlighten us on this matter tonight.

It must be remembered that not one Member of the House of Commons saw these treaties until three weeks ago. The Treasury Bench has twitted us by saying that we have known about these things for many years. But these treaties were not even translated until quite recently. Indeed, they were not available to us until 4th February this year. Perhaps the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should have a word with his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General to tell him not to be impatient when hon. Members want to ask questions about these matters. If hon. Members genuinely try to elicit further points, the Solicitor-General must not treat them in a tetchy or bad-tempered way. He must be willing to share his mind and his knowledge with us.

I turn to the last of the group of treaties, to the greatest mystery of all. I said that there were five association agreements under Article 238. I have mentioned four. I have in my hand a fifth and I invite the Committee to study its colour. It is not in the treaty series at all; indeed, it is not a treaty. It is part of the secondary legislation—the regulations issued by the Community up to the cut-off date of 10th November, 1971. It is the Association Agreement under Article 238 with Malta. It is a whole volume. It is here as a regulation. Clearly the worries of a number of right hon. and hon. Members about whether there was no serious relationship between the ability of the Community to spew out secondary legislation and its ability to create self-executing treaties are well founded. Here we have it. It has come together in the covers of a separate volume of regulations.

No doubt we shall have an interesting explanation from the right hon. and learned Gentleman—

Mr. Jay: In the case of the treaty with Malta, can my right hon. Friend tell the Committee whether it is a treaty simply with the Community or whether the member States also signed it?

Mr. Shore: That is a very good question. The truth is that it is not signed by the member States. It is a treaty made with the Communities, so it is automatic in that sense and again falls outside the subtle and comprehensive defence mechanisms of Clause 1(3)B and, instead, comes under the non-provisions of 1(3)A.
As the Committee will be aware, I am dealing with the need for this House to have much greater control over Community treaties. Having made this point in relation to treaties made under Article 238, perhaps I might return to the other question of trade treaties and the like which the right hon. and learned Gentleman admitted would not be defended by the 1(3)B procedure because they were treaties which came under the category of treaties made by the Communities without the participation of the member States and, therefore, were of no concern to this Parliament.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: Might I ask my right hon. Friend to clarify one point? I think the Committee may become a little confused. In fact, there is no Clause 1(3)(a) or (b). My right hon. Friend is discussing the first and second parts of subsection (3). I know that we have been referring to the two parts as though they were separate paragraphs to the subsection. But that may be confusing. I suggest that we should refer to them as the first and second parts of subsection (3).

Mr. Shore: There is a lot in what my hon. Friend says. We have a problem about agreeing the vocabulary which we should use to identify different parts of the treaty—

Sir D. Walker-Smith: As I was the author of those descriptions, which the Committee adopted subsequently, perhaps I might remind the Committee that I referred to them as Parts A and B. If we stick to that nomenclature, there will be no confusion. But I agree with the

hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) that if one mentions Article 238 and then goes straight on to refer to "1(3)A", it is a little confusing. Perhaps we should stick to "Part A" and "Part B". Then the matter will be beyond doubt, as far as any of these matters can be.

Mr. Shore: We must try to make clear those matters which it lies in our power to make clear. We face a sufficient number of matters in the Bill which are inherently confusing and muddled as it is. However, I think that the Committee knows the part to which I am referring.
When the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster sought to justify letting the Community make trade and commercial treaties on our behalf without having any opportunity in the House of Commons to interpose ourselves, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
Since our treaty obligations will call for us to be automatically bound by treaties entered into by the Communities, their binding effect for member States cannot be dependent on action by national Parliaments.
Because this was part of their power, he said that we must not interfere. Then he went on to soften the blow by saying:
That may seem to some right hon. and hon. Members as being in some way strange. However, it is not so strange. Looking at the list of existing Community treaties in this category"—
the category of self-executing treaties—
we see that many of them are of very limited interest to this country and this Parliament."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1395–6.]
The right hon. and learned Gentleman went on to give an example. He sited the agreement with Iran in October, 1963, and mentioned that it dealt with grapes and caviar. That was splendid stuff. It was a matter of major interest and importance.
7.45 p.m.
What is extraordinary is that, given the opportunity to expound the meaning and significance of this part of Clause 1(3), dealing with treaties over which we have no control, the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned that but failed to mention the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement whose renewal depends entirely upon this procedure, and the Community treaty with New Zealand which will have to be negotiated in 1977 and which will never come to this House


but, instead, will be under the Article 113 procedure. I do not think that that is frank. I do not think that it is fair.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): In future matters with which we shall be dealing in the Community, the position will be easier than in regard to past matters. Incidentally, I dealt with the treaty with Iran specifically at the request of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. John).

Mr. Shore: We are not dealing with past matters here. The future of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement is a future matter, as is the New Zealand one. These other treaties about which the right hon. and learned Gentleman could have told us are very important. There was a rash of Community treaty making towards the end of the 1960s, and activity of enormous significance in terms of the future of the one-world trading system of which we have been part and which in my view was the great bulwark of our prosperity in the post-war years. It is being nibbled away by this Community preferential treaty-making process.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman tells us that it is all a matter of no importance and one of virtual indifference to us. All that he thinks it right to mention to us is that Iran has a treaty to sell us graps and caviar. I find it very odd. It is a lack of can dour which is surprising, and it will not help the right hon. and learned Gentleman's cause.
We have talked about Article 113, the trade treaty Clause of the Rome Treaty. But there is a similar Clause in the Euratom Treaty of 1957. Why the Opposition should have to mention all this and why it should be my job to give the Committee information and to expound the content of the treaties, I do not know. It should be the job of the Treasury Bench. It is a job for which clearly they have no appetite. So I have to remind the Committee that there is also another treaty and that under Article 101 we have the external relations of Euratom. That again is, as it were, a Community relations treaty with other States. Whether this is significant, I do not know.
I do not know anything yet about the pattern of treaties and agreements which

Euratom has built up with other countries and trading groups, but potentially it is important. After all, Euratom deals with fissile material, presumably, and nuclear know-how. While it is confined to peaceful uses, can anyone pretend that it is not an extremely important matter that the treaties which may be conducted by this organisation, and, providing that our name is not on the treaty, may be signed with other bodies, will never come to this Parliament to be approved, will never be reported, and will never meet the requirement of an affirmative Resolution? Again, this was not mentioned in our earlier debates.
I emphasise what I said earlier, that all these trade treaties add up to a foreign economic policy, a granting of preference to one part of the world—the Mediterranean and North Africa in the main—the area of French power and ambition. The very act of granting preference to these countries in this area means the withdrawal and denial of preference to many other parts of the world, with which we are much more closely associated.

Mr. Deakins: Would my right hon. Friend agree that many of these preferential trading agreements break the rules of G.A.T.T. and are one of the reasons why, in recent years, the United States has been so annoyed with the overseas economic policies of the Community and in return has retaliated? This has led to an imbalance of world trade and the world monetary system which has reacted adversely on this country.

Mr. Shore: I agree with my hon. Friend—not that we have so far been engaged in this, because we have not been part of the Community. But it is an absolute and indisputable truth that the development of trading treaties by the Six in the last two or three years has sent a great wave of anxiety and resentment through the United States and virtually every other major trading nation.
It is one of the biggest bones of contention which is emerging to dog us in the 'seventies in our efforts to establish a really thriving world trade order. It is a very serious matter. That this should be tucked away and taken out of the competence of this House for discussion, that all the changes in this pattern of treaties should elude us in this way, is a very


worrying development which we should not accept.
Where have we got to in this argument? I think that we have established our point that the so-called small matters which will be dealt with under the first part of Clause 1(3), over which we have no control at all, turn out to be very large matters indeed. No one can doubt this. For the benefit of some right hon. Gentlemen opposite who can think of nothing except what happened and what was said four years ago, I might say that a large number of the matters that I have mentioned—the specifics, like the treaties—have of course been concluded in the last two or three years or on what are really future matters like the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement and the New Zealand commercial agreement. They relate to years ahead and arise out of the negotiations which have been concluded.
Associated with all this, we have seen an interesting switch of tack. The Treasury Bench have, in the course of our debates, begun to move away from the proposition that these are just little matters, and have tried certain new lines of thought. One of them has been that it does not matter, not because the matters are small in themselves, but because, in the actual negotiation of a trade treaty or a Community association agreement, we would have, as they say, a veto inside.
I will not go far over that ground, but even if it were true that a veto existed there, we would still have to look at all these matters in the light of the give and take, the shove and pull of intra-Community politics—of my favour as against yours, the constant horse-trading and bargaining.
That is the reality, but in addition there are certain rules. The Chancellor of the Duchy pretends that he does not know anything about the rules, that everything will come under the formula of vital national interest. Clause 114 of the Treaty of Rome says:
The agreements referred to under Article 113"—
that is, trade agreements—
shall be concluded by the Council on behalf of the Community acting unanimously during the first few stages of the transitional period and by qualified majority thereafter.

As we all know, the transitional period ended on 1st January, 1970. We are now in the final period when qualified majority rule pertains. Unless the right hon. and learned Gentleman argues that on every issue that comes before the Community—like a trade treaty, for example, with Yugoslavia—he will say, "My national interest is involved," he first has to say that he would say it, second he must tell us why we should believe him and he must also say why he should think it effective against other countries in the Community which are claiming equally that it is in their vital national interest that our proposals should not be accepted.
He must also tell us, even more, where and by what authority a clear and unambiguous ruling of the Community has been overborne and rejected by the Community in any subsequent treaty or agreement. Let him point to it. He has not done so: of course not. So that safeguard does not look very strong.
The last matter on which right hon. Gentlemen opposite tried to base their defence is that, at the end of the day, we can have an ad hoc Committee to look at treaties before they are signed and to do something about it. I will not pursue that one, because I have always believed that in these debates we should keep rigidly within the ambit of our Amendments. Although I am tempted to deal with this, I shall leave it to another time and will simply conclude by saying that I have demonstrated, I hope sufficiently, that we were—no doubt unwittingly—very seriously misled during the debates last week, and that the precise categories of treaty which have been referred to turn out not to be precise at all, and that the so-called defences which we have heard turn out to be far weaker than the Chancellor or the Solicitor-General has even begun to admit.
With that in mind, when the right moment comes, I hope that the Committee will support the Amendment and any other which will increase the power of this House over the future making of treaties by this country.

8.0 p.m.

Mr. J. Selwyn Gummer: The right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore) discussed a number of matters concerning the Amendment, but it would be worth the Committee's while to examine for a moment his complaint


about preferential trade treaties. He thought it of great moment to point out that many of these were with countries which had formerly been associated as colonial territories with France but that very few were with countries formerly associated as colonial territories with Great Britain. That is hardly surprising, since France is a member of the Community and Britain is not.
It is likely that in future such treaties will be made, as indeed certain of them have already been made, with other third countries with long associations with this country. I thought it a not insubstantial point, particularly as it ignored the larger association treaties made with Greece and Turkey—neither, in the right hon. Gentleman's words, in the ambit of French colonial history.
These preferential trade treaties are complained of because they are made by the Community, working under the orders of the Council of Ministers and negotiated and then agreed to, if that is the answer, by the Council of Ministers. This is considered to be harmful and dangerous. More than that, it is considered to be something not within the ken of the Opposition in previous negotiations. I do not want to go back over that, but I noted that the argument was used that because certain treaties were entered into after negotiations, in which the right hon. Gentleman took some part at the beginning, there can be no question of suggesting that the Opposition, when they were in power, had any idea about this treaty-making power. Specifically, of course, it is true that certain of the treaties were agreed after that time, but as a general matter of principle everyone has always been perfectly clear that the Council of Ministers, on behalf of the Community, had certain powers to make treaties, which it made on behalf of the Community and which were not then subject to agreement individually by the member Parliaments of the Community.
What we are talking about is not that Great Britain shall have no part in the decisions or that the Council of Ministers shall not have the directing of those decisions, but that this Parliament shall not, after the treaties have been made, have power of emendation and alteration. It would be very odd if one could negotiate a treaty, carry out the treaty, make

the agreements—"horse-trading" was, I believe, the phrase used—and then have the treaty unmade and be asked to go back and remake it. That is not the way we have been operating the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, which was recently discussed clause by clause and line by line on the Floor of the House of Commons. It would be impossible for any Government to conclude any treaty if that was the way it was operated. Therefore, the objection must be not to some new method of creating treaties and to the law of treaties but to the fact that it is the Communiy and not the British Government which makes the treaty.
That is an objection that hon. Members must have had in 1967 and in 1962. It is perfectly reasonable to have that objection, but it is not reasonable to suggest that it is a new objection or is something which has been tucked away. I believe that if anybody is not being honest with the House, it is the right hon. Member for Stepney, because he is now suggesting that there has been some kind of plot to hide from him and his colleagues things which, if they did not know, they should be ashamed of themselves for not knowing because everyone else has known of them. It has been part of the Community, an essential part of the Community. What an odd Community to be joining, if it is so small that it cannot negotiate with other communities, discuss with other nations or see itself as a Community. That is a very odd kind of Community, one which is hardly worth joining. This has been quite clear all along.

Mr. John Mendelson: The hon. Gentleman says that it is not new. How often before has he, as a Member of Parliament, approved of the United Kingdom joining such a Community?

Mr. Gummer: It would be an odd Community, I suggest, which could not do this. I am suggesting that if it were unable to do so there would be very little point in joining the Community, because it would have no powers or means as a Community. It would be merely an association of States, of a kind which hon. Members would obviously be happier about because it would be less powerful and lessable to carry out the sort of purposes which we would want.
I would like to return to the suggestion that the Community and the treaties which it enters into, and the powers which the Clause contains and which the Amendment would seek to remove, have somehow been hidden from the House of Commons. I believe that this is the second series of Amendments on which that sort of suggestion has been made. More than that, the right hon. Member for Stepney suggested that in some way the Solicitor-General, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had specifically failed to make clear the points that he particularly wanted to have made clear, and he suggested that there was certain cavalier treatment of himself and his hon. Friends. The right hon. Gentleman was not present in the House when one of his hon. Friends complained that Article 111 did not tie up with Article 114 and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster pointed out that the reason was that the first two lines related in one case to the transitional period and in the other case to the period afterwards. If the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are unwilling to read articles, they must not complain that they do not understand them.
It was more than a complaint. The suggestion was that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends had suddenly unearthed a precious piece of fact—those were the words. It is the first two lines of Article 111. An attempt is being made to say that it is unclear, that there is a great deal which it is not possible to discover and that in some way the Government are hiding it from the House of Commons. But the clarity of the Clause is so pronounced that some of my hon. Friends have all along very consistently objected, precisely as my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) showed he had objected for many years to precisely the power of the Community. The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways and say on the one hand that he has objected for many years—which he has—and on the other hand that the Government have hidden this power. The right hon. Gentleman has been very consistent and he made an earlier speech showing the distinction between the two.
I would suggest that the fact is that the power of the Community to make

treaties has been enshrined in the Treaty of Rome ever since the Treaty of Rome was signed. Everyone has been aware of that power, and right hon. Members and hon. Members opposite who thought it worthwhile for us to associate ourselves with the Common Market by joining the European Economic Community cannot with honesty now suggest that they do not want the Clause or that they want to amend it because it contains something about which they did not know. They did know about it, and the rest of the world knows that they knew about it. This is in many ways, although not a wrecking Amendment, a fictitious Amendment as far as the right hon. Member for Stepney is concerned.

Mr. Peter Archer: I rise, Mr. Brewis, because one of the Amendments selected for discussion with Amendment No. 28 is Amendment No. 2, and it occurred to me that it might assist the Committee if at this early stage in the debate I said a word or two about the purpose behind the Amendment. It is in a sense on a different subject from the Amendment moved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore). I would not seek to travel in the very deep waters of international economics which have been raised by my right hon. Friend's Amendment No. 28.
This Amendment is much more limited and it will not have escaped the notice of the Committee, and it is not a secret, that those who sponsored Amendment No. 2 are not opposed to the purpose of the Bill in so far as that purpose is to facilitate the accession of the United Kingdom to the Community. That is not the principle at stake in Amendment 2. Nor, I imagine, would any sponsor of Amendment No. 2, or indeed any hon. Member on either side of the Committee, seek to question the general principle that the United Kingdom ought to adhere to its obligations under a Community treaty or, indeed, any other treaty.
What is in issue in the Amendment is the right of the House of Commons to satisfy itself that what is alleged to be an obligation really is an obligation. The issue is as narrow as that. If it is said that a particular obligation falls within the constitutional short circuit provided by the Bill, that the treaty really is a


treaty to which the Bill applies, I submit that the House of Commons is entitled to satisfy itself that that is so.
Clause 2 contains provisions for implementing the United Kingdom's obligations under these treaties. The Amendment merely raises the question: to which treaties shall Clause 2 apply; and where it is necessary that a particular step shall be taken before Clause 2 applies to a particular treaty, what shall that step be?
Subsection (3) states that such a treaty shall be defined by what lawyers, in a rather tiresome way, describe in their dog Latin as the ipse dixit of the Government. If the Minister says that it is in the box, then it is in the box.
We have no complaint that that is the position for a treaty entered into before the relevant date. Where the Government declare that such is the effect of a particular treaty, that is the effect without discussion in the House of Commons. There is no complaint about that, because we know what is in the existing treaties and we know which are the treaties because the Bill defines them. We may not be wholly familiar with all their terms—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney said, we have not had a very long period within which to familiarize ourselves with them—but we know what treaties are being referred to and we have access to what is in them. Therefore it is not objectionable that subsection (3) should deal with the matter in that way.
However, where we are dealing with treaties which have not yet come into existence, for all we know, where certainly we have not had our attention brought to them because the United Kingdom has not acceded to them, we submit that different principles apply.
In the normal situation, the Bill properly provides that there shall be discussion in the House of Commons, because the Government cannot declare a treaty to be within Clause 2 unless there is an affirmative Resolution. We all know, sometimes from bitter and frustrating experience, that that is the only way to ensure that there shall be discussion in the House. Even where such an affirmative Resolution is not required, it is arguable that, when an

Order in Council comes before the House, someone might choose to move a Prayer against it.
We all know what happens to Prayers of that kind. We are told that in the old days it was normal to ensure that debating time was found for them. In these days anyone who moves a Prayer of that kind is lucky indeed, or he has secured the approbation of the Government, if time is given to debate his Prayer. Therefore, the only way that we can ensure that there is a debate in the House for such an Order in Council is to bring it within this provision and to say that there shall be an affirmative Resolution.
Up to this stage we have no quarrel with the terms of the Clause. In fact, the latter half of the subsection is indeed assiduous for the rights of the House of Commons, as we would expect.

Mr. Deakins: Mr. Deakins rose—

Mr. Archer: My hon. Friend seems to be in some doubt. I am merely pointing out that, so far as it goes, the latter part of the subsection adds a protection for the House. If that protection were not there, we would properly complain—[Interruption.] What I am arguing is that the protection does not go far enough. Perhaps my hon. Friends will allow me to complete the argument before they disagree with it.
The terms of the subsection do not extend the protection for the rights of the House to a pre-accession treaty, even if the United Kingdom has not yet acceded, if the terms are already settled. Even if we do not know what the terms are, we shall be saddled with a declaration by the Government that those terms impose an obligation which will automatically fall within the constitutional short circuit of Clause 2. We are being asked to pass the Bill without knowing all the obligations to which it is to give effect. That, in short, is the point of the Amendment.
8.15 p.m.
Where the criterion is that the Government have already entered into a treaty, there are no complaints because we know what treaties are being talked about. But where all that has happened is that the terms have been agreed, so far it is not self-evident to us that those terms


should be beyond discussion merely because the Government later decide to accede to them. Indeed, it is far from clear what counts as the terms being agreed. How have they to be agreed? Can the agreement take the form of a casual discussion late at night over a glass of beer or during a walk round the garden between two senior Ministers, two plenipotentiaries, or between two relatively minor officials?

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Or over a coffee and cognac.

Mr. Archer: I should not complain if they were agreed over a coffee and cognac. My hon. Friend may disagree with that method, but I have no complaint about the method. I should like to know what counts as being agreed. What is the agreement about which we are talking? What are the terms? How are we to know when the terms have been settled? Are the terms to be published in a document? I am grateful to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, because he seems to be nodding assent. So any memorandum of the terms will not be embedded in a file marked "Top secret". However, it is not self-evident from the text. I hope that we shall get a straight answer.
On this part of the Clause we are in difficulty because it is not clear what counts as the terms having been settled. If they have to be embodied in a document which is published, that makes it a little easier. But what happens after that? Will the Government then say "We will give effect to those terms exactly as agreed without the most minor amendment"? If a minor amendment is introduced, does that treaty count as giving effect to those terms?
I can imagine an endless vista of possibilities. Suppose that the draftsman, when he settles the treaty, points out that the draft is difficult to settle because some essential term was never dealt with. Those of us who on occasion have practised draftsmanship know how frequently that kind of situation arises. Then the lawyers, who are always on tap, not on top, in this situation, go back and say "Will you please tell us what you want to say about this?" It is only at that stage that any agreement comes into existence upon this particular term because no one thought of it previously.
What is to happen in a situation which no one had thought about previously? When the treaty comes to be drafted and that kind of problem arises and, in effect, a new term has to be settled because no one has dealt with it before, is the treaty giving effect to those terms? That is the kind of problem which has been troubling us.
I submit that the only satisfactory way of dealing with this matter is to say that the criterion shall be that there is a clear text, embodied in a treaty which has been acceded to before the relevant date, so that we all know when we discuss the Bill which treaties are being referred to and what their terms are. For any treaties acceded to after that date, there really is no problem. All that the Government have to do is to produce an Order in Council which is brought before the House of Commons, debated in the normal way and given effect by affirmative Resolution.
There is no secret about this. Those of us who sponsor the Amendment do so in no spirt of hostility to the Community. We wish the Community well. It is for that reason that we wish to ensure that its policies are subject to the proper control of the people through their elected representatives. Our purpose in supporting the Community was not to produce a less democratic and more bureaucratic society. We believe—no doubt some of my right hon. and hon. Friends will disagree with this—that slowly, not as quickly as some of us would like, the Community is moving in the direction of that very difficult reconciliation between effective democracy and effective internationalism. But we believe that it would be the worst of all possible precedents if, in the interests of acceding to the treaty, that process were retarded.

Mr. Powell: I wish to refer, amongst this group of three Amendments which is before the Committee, to No. 83, that which stands in my name and which raises, if I may say so with due respect to the other Amendments, the largest of the three issues; for the effect of that Amendment would be to ensure that if in future the United Kingdom entered into a new treaty in the framework of the Community, new legislation in Parliament would be necessary.
Certainly this is not the first time that this really fundamental question has been


raised in the course of these debates. Nevertheless, it would be quite untrue to say that its renewal now in the framework of this debate is in any way otiose or repetitious. I leave aside the fact, which we have constantly to remember during these debates, that perforce a very large number of our colleagues on both sides of the House of Commons must miss a high proportion of the debates on the Bill, although they are just as much concerned as the rest of us with the constitutional consequences if the Bill were to pass. That is something we can never forget; nor can we overlook the effect upon the minds of hon. Members when they have the opportunity to hear that which those of us who are specially concerned with the Bill are debating from day to day.
But the main reason why I say it was right and necessary that the Committee should return to this question is that we only now have before us the important statements which, when it was last raised, were made by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, though there was a considerable difference, as I shall presently argue, between the points of view and the answers which were offered by my two right hon. and hon. Friends, and I shall therefore need to consider separately the two statements which they made. It is really impossible for the Committee, with a Bill of this sort before it, to address itself to the major questions which we have to answer unless we have already had the opportunity to hear the statements of the Government and to consider them maturely; and this is the first opportunity which we have really had to debate this point in the light of the statement made by my right hon. and learned Friend on the night of 7th March or that made by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General on 8th March.
I must say at once that I dissent from the remarks which have been made at various stages in derogation of my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General. I consider that what he has said to the Committee on every occasion, but in particular on this subject with which I am now concerned, has been extraordinarily frank and, to that extent,

extraordinarily helpful to the Committee. Whatever complaint I believe can be made about my hon. and learned Friend, it is not the complaint either of wilful concealment or of a desire to give the Committee short change; and I think anybody who addresses himself fairly to what my hon. and learned Friend had to say last week on the subject of parliamentary procedure on future treaties will be obliged to agree with my contention.
This afternoon in the debate from which we have just parted a new point in this context was raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General. Last week it was common ground between all hon. Members taking part in the debate that the successive future developments of the Community would take place in the form of treaties falling within the definition of Clause 1 of the Bill and thus attracting the procedure which it is now customary in the Committee to describe as Clause 1(3)(B). This afternoon, however, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General modified—perhaps I should more fairly say, extended—that statement by indicating that, although the development of the Community could take place by way of treaties which were within the terms of Clause 1, that would not necessarily be the case, and that one could envisage the development of the Community by way of new treaties which were altogether outside the Bill. Of course, I entirely concede that, so far as the procedure adopted was that of new treaties to which the Bill does not apply, the Government of the day would necessarily have to come back to Parliament and that therefore the case which I am making would not arise.
Nevertheless, I am quite sure that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General would not dispute that the progressive development of the Community not only could take place, but would be most likely to take place, by means of agreements and instruments which were fully within the definition of Clause 1 of the Bill. I think anyone who reads what my hon. and learned Friend said on that subject will admit that he was clearly envisaging that the Bill would be the vehicle for the subsequent development and extension of the Community. Indeed, some of the most important developments—in fact, all the important developments—which have taken place in the whole


15 years of the life of the Community have been in the form of amendments to existing treaties.
I think, therefore, that the Committee is addressing itself to the substance of the matter if we assume that normally the development, however far-reaching, however progressive, which the advocates of British membership look forward to, would take place under the guise of treaties as treaties are defined in Clause 1 of the Bill. In that sense, even after what my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said this afternoon, we are all of us in this Committee setting out from the same starting-line and assumptions.

[Mr. E. L. MALLALIEU in the Chair.]

8.30 p.m.

Last week my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General took fully and candidly the point which I was making. He said on 8th March:
He"—
that was I—
referred to the necessity for any change, be it great or small, in the scope of the existing treaties being subjected to the full legislative procedures of the House of Commons.
That is exactly the contention I was making last week and it is the contention I am making tonight. Although my hon. and learned Friend pointed out that there could be many amendments of the treaties which would be of an entirely minor and even formal character, he did not seek to deny that other treaty arrangements which might fall under Clause 1 could be of very far-reaching importance indeed. He candidly said in relation to my argument:
I do not underestimate the importance of the point.
Later he said:
it is important that Parliament should be able to intervene.
There is, therefore, a further level of agreement between my hon. and learned Friend and myself and many other hon. Members of the Committee. My hon. and learned Friend expressly admitted that there could be future treaties—treaties in the sense of the Bill—for which the full parliamentary procedure of legislation would be right and justified. He was too candid not to say that; and he greatly helped the Committee by the frankness of that admission. But then he found himself in great difficulty, because the Bill as

drafted envisages only a simple procedure by affirmative Resolution.

It is of the greatest importance that the Committee should address itself to the manner in which my hon. and learned Friend sought to reconcile his belief, as a good Parliamentarian, in what would be right and necessary with the terms of the Bill which he was defending. He said:
Suppose a treaty extending or potentially extending, the scope of Community powers were to be introduced merely by Order in Council under that provision.
He was referring to Part B of subsection (3). He went on:
Suppose, then, that a significant part of the House thought that it was one that required the introduction of substantive legislation, to make detailed changes of the kind contained in the second Part of the Bill, for example.
The Solicitor-General was there still posing the dilemma, entirely candidly and frankly. He then resolved it in these words:
That action would be one of the considerations that Parliament would want to bear in mind in deciding whether to approve the specification of a treaty in that way. One of the reasons why approval could be refused would be not merely that Parliament did not like it, but that Parliament was not prepared to tolerate the Executive resorting to acceptance of it merely by an Order in Council."—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1550–51.]

What an enchanting picture for my hon. and learned Friend to put before us—an idyllic scene, one of pastoral simplicity which should be acted by shepherds and shepherdesses from the innocent age of mankind. Here, says he, are the Government, proposing a simple affirmative Resolution, which will bring into force automatically in the law of this country a big extension or development of the Community, an extension perhaps every bit as large as that involved in the Bill. But, says my hon. and learned Friend,
a significant part of the House
think that it should require substantive legislation. Note that he did not refer to "a majority" or even "a narrow minority", such as we are getting on current Divisions; he simply referred to "a significant part"—two or three dozen hon. Members, perhaps, who devote themselves to these questions and show themselves reluctant for the matter to be disposed of just by an affirmative Resolution, believing instead that there should


be legislation—a view which hypothetically my hon. and learned Friend would himself accept, for he does not exclude that there could be cases in which that would be the right view.

My hon. and learned Friend's imaginary picture is that the Government, after hearing the speeches of this "significant part" of hon. Members, would say "In view of the objection to this procedure which has been taken by a significant part of the House, we shall withdraw the Resolution and introduce a Bill later in the Session". If you can imagine that, Mr. Mallalieu, you can imagine anything, Imagine a Government not, as this Government are at the moment, a suitor to Parliament for the entry of this country into the Community, but a Government already operating within the framework of the Community, who have negotiated a further extension and development of it and are laying this as an accomplished fact before the House of Commons in the one parliamentary procedure which is statutorily necessary, an affirmative Resolution.

Imagine that Government, on hearing the view expressed here and there from one side or the other, that this is really something which ought to be done by legislation, bowing to that expression of opinion and taking no notice of the three-line Whip which had been laid on for the occasion but gracefully sweeping the Resolution off the Dispatch Box in order to come back a few weeks later with a Bill, to be passed through all its stages in both Houses, whatever might be the legislative programme of that Session.

If this is an act of imagination, Mr. Mallalieu, which you find difficult to the degree of impossibility, how much more difficult must it be for my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, who are engaged at present in ramming this initial legislation through, not against the disinclination of "a significant part" of the House of Commons but by majorities of eight, 13, or whatever they can scrape in the Division Lobbies, and with the knowledge of the deep resentment which this forcing of the legislation is incurring out of doors.

It was a marvellous picture, corresponding, if I may say so, to his own can dour and purity of heart, which my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-

General placed before the Committee. The pity of it is that it has no reality or substance whatsoever. It would be one of those "scenes at which we have not assisted". Unless legislation is rendered necessary by the form of the Bill, there will be no legislation; for a Government who can do a thing by Resolution will always do it by Resolution, if they can get a majority of one in the Division Lobbies.

Mr. Deakins: Is the right hon. Gentleman putting a correct construction on what the Solicitor-General said at column 1551 of our debate last Wednesday, because the Solicitor-General could say that approval could be refused? That does not suggest to me that the Government would be willing to withdraw a Resolution if a significant voice had been heard in the Committee on all sides that legislation was necessary. I should have thought that the only proper construction of those words—and it is a damning construction—is that the Government would go ahead with the Resolution and, if they were defeated, would say that this was not a defeat on the Resolution but was a defeat which meant that they now had to bring in legislation.

Mr. Powell: The hon. Member can have it whichever way he pleases, but the effect is the same. The effect is that with the Bill as it stands, the notion of my hon. and learned Friend that we can still have our legislation if we make it clear enough somehow that a Resolution is not adequate simply does not stand up to examination. He concluded that
this is a properly adjusted, diverse method"—
that is an elegant word, "diverse", when incidentally there is only one method in the Bill; the diversity exists only in the imagination of my hon. and learned Friend—
whereby Parliament can assert its control".—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1552.]
He said 'diverse" because he thought Parliament could react by making it clear that a treaty should be the subject of legislation; but unfortunately that is a figment of his imagination, something which, in real parliamentary terms, in the circumstances of the power struggle in the House of Commons, simply does not happen. That is why we have to


have the safeguard and the assurance of legislation in the form of the Bill.
Before I sit down I intend to suggest a way in which this can be done, which I hope may be acceptable, at any rate to my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, since his instincts in this matter, quite clearly from what he said, are on the side of Parliament, of Parliamentarians, and of those who say that in any major advance legislation by the House of Commons is necessary.
Before that, I want to come to the rather different approach of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His argument is a different one. The essence of it is that a Resolution would be perfectly adequate, because by the time we reach the point of a treaty having been made and requiring to be recognised as a treaty for the purposes of the Bill, so much consultation will have taken place, stage after stage, that we shall not merely be familiar with the contents of the treaty—as familiar as we are with the White Paper of 1967—but the House of Commons will effectively have given its assent to the treaty and will, indeed, have been involved, by that process of consultation and consent, in the very making of the treaty.
That is the essence of my right hon. and learned Friend's contention. Indeed it is entirely and honourably consistent with the grounds on which he has denied the claim of those of us who say that the result of the Bill and the result of the policy which lies behind it will be a major diminution of the sovereignty of Parliament and of the House of Commons. Not so, says my right hon. and learned Friend, because in the future, as members of the Community and under arrangements which the House of Commons is quite capable of making, we, as a House of Commons, shall have been drawn into the preliminary processes and shall have influenced and moulded them to such an extent that when at last the treaty comes before us, preliminary to a Resolution, it will be the work of our own hands which we shall recognise. This is the story of the ad hoc committee and its recommendations. The ad hoc committee is to make recommendations about not only regulations, directives, and so on, but treaties.
On 7th March, my right hon. and learned Friend said:

Clearly the committee would wish to consider the scope of parliamentary consideration in respect of treaties as in other matters."—[Official Report, 7th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1397.]
We are to have, though we have no idea yet what it might be, a procedure whereby at the previous stages, moving right up to the conclusion of a treaty, the settling of the terms—that, perhaps, would be the phrase which would occur to the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer)—the House of Commons would have been apprised of what was going on, would have been consulted and would have been involved in the decisions. That is the contention.
To regard anything of that kind as an alternative to legislation is a profound misconception of what the House of Commons is about, a profound misconception of the function and the functioning of the House of Commons and of Parliament. Last week I coined a phrase which has had some success, when I described some of the consequences of Clause 1 in its present form as "prerogative legislation". I will try another. I will say that the essence of my right hon. and learned Friend's case is to advocate legislation by consultation. But the House of Commons is not primarily or characteristically a consultative assembly.
I will go further and say that on the occasions on which it is consulted and told that it does not have to take a decision yet—because it is dealing with a Green Paper or because it is having a preliminary debate—it is at its worst and most ineffective. The House is itself only when there is a precise proposition before it, on which it has to say "Yea" or "Nay". A consultative function, however organised, cannot replace or displace its legislative function. It is from that legislative function that its power derives.
8.45 p.m.
It is not surprising that the proffer of a consultative function should be part of the Government's case; for consultative assemblies are familiar to the European Community. There are Parliaments in the Community which are purely consultative Parliaments. I say this without a shadow of disrespect; to point to difference is not a mark of disrespect. All those countries are entirely used to the


notion of assemblies which, without the final, absolute sovereignty which made this House of Commons what it is, are brought into consultation and are enmeshed with the processes of the Executive.
It therefore does not reassure those of us who are fearful for the future sovereignty of Parliament to be told that an elaboration of the consultative processes will be a substitute for legislation. Indeed, that could not be, because at no stage can a consultative act be decisive: at all stages it is provisional. For instance, the Council of Ministers are now deciding by how much food prices are to be raised in the Community. There is a tremendous amount of to and fro and pressure from one side and the other, and we are told that it will be days, perhaps weeks, before something arises which can somehow be accepted by all the members of the Council of Ministers. It would be inconceivable that the House of Commons, consulted beforehand, could lay down terms and send a Minister to Brussels, or wherever it might be, telling him that he must agree to those terms and to nothing else. No Minister could accept such a remit. It is contradictory to the position of a member of the Council of Ministers.
But we have in our recent past experienced an even more vivid picture of what would happen under the consultative procedure leading up to a treaty. In what I am going to say, I mean no derogation from the great respect with which my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has invariably treated the House during the last 18 months and more that he has held his present office. In the negotiations at every stage, as they have moved towards completion of the treaty signed at Brussels on 22nd January, he has come back to the House with a statement of the various elements of the negotiations. Within the tolerance of the Chair, we have had question and answer, sometimes for half an hour or three-quarters of an hour, following his statements. Then it was all wrapped up into a White Paper, and we had a debate in principle, a consultation perhaps, a 10-day debate in which, true, the major considerations, the major outer framework, of the decision for or against joining the Community

could be discussed, but in which it was impossible for the House to address itself to the treaty as a treaty.
At no stage up to January—and this was nobody's fault, because it was in the nature of the process—was the examination by the House of Commons of the elements of that treaty, their balance, their relative advantages one with another, possible. Then when the treaty was at last a treaty, we were told—and this is "to renew an unspeakable sorrow", which I am no more anxious to do than Aeneas in the second book of the Aeneid—that "all that is now past; that must be accepted; that cannot be undone and examined; this is a Bill which is merely to provide the nuts and bolts".
How much more in the debate on a Resolution should we be told "You have heard it all. You had the opportunity to learn of this bit and that bit. There have been reports to the House. Perhaps there has been a Committee sitting upstairs which actually looked at some of the draft articles of the treaty. Now that it is a treaty you can only say 'Yes' or 'No'; and, by the way, it is quite impracticable for you to say 'No'".
Consultation cannot be a substitute for legislation. Even legislation, as we are discovering with the Bill, can be a very imperfect instrument of control for the House, but it is even so a formidable instrument of control, and we must still have it in the context of any major change or development of the Community.
Now I want to suggest to my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench how this can be achieved, for I do not make light of the point of my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General when he said that some of these changes, some of these treaties, agreements, instruments, understandings, may be quite trivial, not suitable for a long and laborious legislative process. I do not wish to deny that. So I make two alternative propositions.
The first is that since my hon. and learned Friend himself recognises candidly, and presumably on behalf of the Government, that there are circumstances falling within the four corners of the Bill in which legislation is the right procedure, he should introduce into the Bill an Amendment which distinguishes between what the Government regard as the


type of circumstances for which a Resolution is suitable, and those for which they will not seek to legislate now but which are to require new, future legislation.
It is certainly not beyond the capacity of Parliamentary draftsmen, briefed by my hon. and learned Friend, to find a formula which will match exactly what is his express view and opinion. So I say to my hon. and learned Friend "That is one alternative. Be as good as your word, and put forward an Amendment to the Bill which will satisfy the whole House, at any rate in principle; an Amendment which distinguishes the trivia from the essentials and makes it possible, if you wish, to deal with the trivia by Resolution, but necessary to legislate where the essentials, the major matters, are concerned."
However, if my hon. and learned Friend has instructions from my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary, too strict to be disobeyed, against any action which might be calculated to involve a Report stage of the Bill, and if he is therefore disinclined to formulate his own opinion in terms of an Amendment, I put forward the alternative, which is very simple and which I am sure his own parliamentary experience will commend to him.
It is one of the characteristics of the House of Commons that we know trivialities when we see them, and we get rid of them very quickly. That is something the public often misunderstand about the House. Those matters on which we are agreed, those matters to which no objection is raised, we dispose of very swiftly indeed. There is no loss of time in legislation which is required to do that which all are agreed is both necessary and relatively unimportant.
If my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General will make a small test and take the legislative calendar for any Session, he will have no difficulty in picking out a whole series of Government Measures which have taken up hardly any time at all. So if he is right in saying, as I am sure he is, that many of these future treaties, in the technical sense of "treaty" in Clause 1, will be of little importance and little contention, let him not fear, let his colleagues not fear, that any loss of parliamentary time will be involved. It will not; they will go through in a manner proportionate to

their unimportance and to the degree of agreement about them.
The simpler alternative, therefore, is that which I propose in Amendment No. 83. That is, to draw a clear distinction between past and future—to say that in the Bill we are legislating for what we know but that we decline to legislate in advance for what we do not know. If my hon. and learned Friend accepts that—I do not need to say "if". for his very argument last week showed that he felt and accepted it—and if my right hon. and learned Friend accepts that—and surely both as true Parliamentarians must do so—they will have lost nothing whatsoever. Here I am on the same point as the hon. and learned Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton. They will have lost nothing whatsoever in regard to their desire that this country should join the Community—that is not in issue on this Amendment—but they will have shown, in the form of the Bill, that they respect what we believe they really respect, the honour and dignity and supremacy of the House of Commons.

Mr. John Mendelson: The Committee has listened to a massive argument from the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) which is a further indication of the essential nature of these debates in which the Committee has been and is engaged. It has also listened to an attractive case with which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer) introduced his Amendment.
My hon. and learned Friend knows that I have great respect for him as a colleague and a Member of Parliament. He will not take it amiss when I say that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was not ill at ease when my hon. and learned Friend moved the Amendment, because he did not feel that it presented any great difficulty for him, that was because, before my hon. and learned Friend proceeded to make the case, he gave away two important cases which he ought not to have given away. I do not know to how much of the debates in the last few days my hon. and learned Friend has listened—I do not say this in any way offensively because if he has not been physically present he can have read the Report of the debates—but to say that he finds nothing at all disturbing both in the first


part of the subsection and in the second part was a very far-reaching assurance to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That was why the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not feel uncomfortable during my hon. and learned Friend's speech.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Peter Archer: All I was saying was that Clause 1(3) was, so far as it goes, a concession on the part of the Government. I was not saying that there was nothing in the least objectionable in subsection (3).

Mr. Mendelson: Hon. Member on this Committee have laboured hard and have proved that what my hon. and learned Friend now calls a concession is no concession at all and what my hon. and learned Friend by implication would recommend to the Committee as a safeguard is no safeguard at all. It is because I respect my hon. and learned Friend that I deliberately began by bringing this point to his attention.
I welcome the presence of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, but I enter a small protest at the absence of the hon. and learned Solicitor-General who should by now be back in his place. Many of the essential arguments that he, as the chief author of the Bill has put forward are now under serious consideration. For instance, he should have heard the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), 75 per cent. of which dealt with the propositions advanced by the Solicitor-General. I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy to use the good offices of the Government machine to see that the Solicitor-General is here as soon as possible so that he can give his opinion to the Committee.
During our discussions on the Industrial Relations Bill, except on the occasion of Cabinet meetings and negotiations, both the Secretary of State for Employment and the Solicitor-General were present in their places throughout the debates. I do not underestimate the importance of the Industrial Relations Bill although I have never believed that it was half as important as the Government pretended it was, but no one would suggest that the Industrial Relations Bill

will prove historically to be more important than the Bill we are now discussing.
The case put this afternoon by the Solicitor-General was the weakest that he has so far advanced. I also found that his temper had not improved. These are early days in the debate on this important Bill, yet the Solicitor-General showed a tantrum this afternoon which was worthy of the nursery and was certainly not becoming for a senior and influential member of Her Majesty's Government. His weak case may have accounted for his bad temper. The Solicitor-General also showed a spirit of considerable rudeness to some hon. Members who had advanced arguments in favour of a set of Amendments. That is no way for him to treat the Committee.
The Solicitor-General made light of the practical implications of the fears expressed by hon. Members, so it will be useful if I give a little meat to the argument. In the anxieties which the Committee has displayed over several days one central concern has clearly emerged, and that is the justified fear of the diminution of Parliament as a decisive and powerful agent in national and international affairs. The Committee has a duty to the House and to the country to build safeguards into the legislation. It is essential that we put some meat on the legal and constitutional skeleton which has been so ably discussed in these debates.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore) mentioned the sugar agreement which in its new form, after the transitional period, would be part and parcel of our policy without any further debate in this House and indeed without any further legislation of any kind. That is the stark fact.
I wish to go into the sugar agreement in a little detail. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has rightly said that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has given a number of detailed accounts of his stewardship during the negotiations. I was present on all those occasions and I would not dissent from that point of view. I would add that there were occasions when, either deliberately or otherwise, some of the details were missing from the accounts given by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. This applies particularly to the


Sugar Agreement. I believe that what I shall say will be controversial, and I am glad that the Chancellor is present so that he may repudiate what I say if he wishes to do so.
What happened during discussions on the Sugar Agreement was this. The Chancellor of the Duchy put forward a point of view that was found to be quite unacceptable to the French Foreign Minister. In the end the right hon. and learned Gentleman completely failed to achieve his own stated objective about a firm agreement incorporating the detailed figures which were to apply and which were intended to give security to the sugar producers at the end of the transitional period. A little later the right hon. and learned Gentleman returned to London and there then occurred the famous meeting at Lancaster House. Unfortunately, not very many details have so far been reported, either in a White Paper or any other State paper, about the discussions at that meeting. All we have heard from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Duchy is a statement that by and large the Ministers concerned have declared themselves to be satisfied with what was proposed. In fact it is well known, particularly in the countries concerned, that for a long time there was no agreement in the discussions at Lancaster House. It is also well known that at the beginning of the discussions one Minister, with the backing of some others, demanded that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should return to obtain agreement on the suggestions which he had put to the meeting of Ministers at Lancaster House.
Several Ministers declared themselves dissatisfied with the method that the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposed, which was simply to go back and read his statement of future intentions and desires and to leave it at that. We have never heard from the right hon. and learned Gentleman why he refused to accept the original request when it was made to him at the Lancaster House meeting—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman help the Chair by relating these remarks to the Amendment?

Mr. Mendelson: I am concerned with the Amendments which are aimed at

ensuring that all treaties, further agreements, and so on that the Community will enter into shall be debated by each House of Parliament before they are considered by the Community. I am adducing as what I consider to be a relevant part of my argument the facts which have never been put in full before this House and which led to the conclusion that it will be necessary at least in future at the end of the transition period that this House should be acquainted with all that goes on in these discussions. That is the burden of my case, and I think that it will be agreed that it is a serious one.
If this information has not been given in the past when the House of Commons was still the House of Commons and we were not members of the Community, there is a grave danger that after we have become members of the Community we shall be given even less information about vital discussions.
I am coming to the end of the case history that I have been giving. It became clear why the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not want to accept what he was urged to do by some of the Ministers at the private meeting at Lancaster House. Then he returned to the negotiations. He never reported fully on them to the House. At the end of these quite difficult discussions, in which he was involved all night, a joint Press conference was held by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and M. Schumann. According to the text published in France at the time and the semi-official text passed by the Quai d' Orsay for French newspapers, the right hon. and learned Gentleman and M. Schumann, sitting side by side at that Press conference, made completely different statements on the results of the sugar agreement discussions. I think that it was the duty of the right hon. and learned Gentleman to report to this House about that disagreement.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman repeated substantially what he had promised the Lancaster House meeting to read into the record. But M. Schumann said that that did not bind the Six and that it bound only the United Kingdom. That was the contrast between the statement given by the Foreign Minister of France—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman must realise that


this is not a debate on the sugar agreement. We must come down to future agreements.

Mr. Mendelson: I am reaching the end of this case history. I return immediately to the present and to the future.
These different statements were the final summing-up on that morning of the two positions. Those of us who got the information at the time had grave forebodings about the kind of agree ment that the right hon. and learned Gentleman had accepted. They have been confirmed since. This is the governing position today. We now see what probably will be the position under the proposed legislation in some future year in discussions about the future of the sugar producers and of the countries concerned. We must know that this is a matter of the difference between poverty and reasonable prosperity for the sugar-producing countries. We are discussing the future of these countries. To a large extent, we are responsible for these negotiations. They could not negotiate themselves. We had to do it. It was the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman must come to the Amendment.

Mr. Mendelson: I am not now returning to the case history with respect, Mr. Mallalieu. I am saying that the United Kingdom Government have to do the negotiating. Although until now I would not have dissented from your directions, I believe that I am now closely addressing myself to the Amendments. It is the continuing position that the United Kingdom Government will have to carry on these negotiations.
If, in those negotiations, the Government find that a one-sided declaration will not be followed by the other members of the Community—what can M. Schumann's statement on that morning mean but the complete repudiation of any responsibility for the statement by the United Kingdom Government representative?—a very grave situation will arise.
One cannot bind future Governments, but that is the significance of these debates. That is why we are concerned about these matters. The duty of the Committee is to see to it that the House

of Commons can then say that we require from the Government legislation on these matters. In this case, we would not even get an affirmative Order in Council, because such a future agreement to the disadvantage of the sugar producers would fail under the first part of the subsection and it would not require any Parliamentary activity apart from talk. So what emerges is the absolute and urgent need for the Committee to move ahead and introduce some of these safeguards.
I turn from that to the point of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West when he drew his distinction between trivia and essentials. I do not want to engage in any critique of the way in which he put his case—that is not my business, and he does not need any advice from me—but I do not share his view that the Government have so far been inspired purely by the love of Parliament and by their position as excellent parliamentarians. The greatest indictment—this is my personal view—of the Chancellor of the Duchy, the Solicitor-General and the Prime Minister, who are all equally responsible, is that they, who have all been regarded as Parliamentarians of some standing, have failed us. If they had acted as good parliamentarians, we should not be discussing these Amendments. Wishing to join the Community, they would have brought forward a different Bill.
They have so far used the argument about 1,000 or 2,000 Bills having to be introduced, in an attempt to bamboozle the Committee into believing that, because one had to have the trivia in order to have the essentials, one could not have either. Having created this Aunt Sally of 2,000 Bills, they have said that it would be absurd to introduce a Bill for each of these minor items—to make the Committee believe that this was the only choice.

Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish: In what way would a different Bill have made any difference whatever to the Community's treaty-making powers, which were clearly recognised by the Lord Chancellor of the last Labour Government and in the 1967 White Paper?

Mr. Mendelson: Ignore the bits about the Lord Chancellor and the 1967 legislation, because that is the bread and butter of the Committee. The hon. and gallant


Member is not with us often enough to know this.

Sir T. Beamish: Will the hon. Gentleman answer my question?

Mr. Mendelson: I certainly will answer the hon. and gallant Gentleman, in my own way and in my own time, subject to the ruling of the Chair and not to his ruling. We are discussing the Lord Chancellor's statement and the 1967 White Paper all the time, but I will not go over the ground with him, because other members of the Committee would not thank me if I did. I come to the treaty-making powers, the essential question put by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, apart from propaganda.

Mr. Rippon: Why does not the hon. Member tell my hon. and gallant Friend that the answer is, "No difference at all"?

Mr. Mendelson: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for being so helpful in devilling for me and trying to answer, but I should like to give my own answer, if I am allowed. The answer is that we are discussing at the moment the Bill introduced by the hon. and gallant Gentleman's Government and party. We are not discussing only the treaty-making powers of the Community. We are discussing the legislation, and I submit—

Sir T. Beamish: We are meant to be discussing an Amendment.

Mr. Mendelson: I do not mind being interrupted. The cut and thrust of debate is all right for the Committee and I do not mind at all. The essential point of the argument is this: we are discussing Amendments to legislation. The treaty-making powers of the Community have been known for a long time. The Committee knows very well that I, at any rate, have never pleaded ignorance, before either the House of Commons or the Committee, on any of these matters; but that has nothing to do with the case put forward this afternoon, for instance, by my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members on this side of the Committee.
It was quite possible for the Government to have introduced a Bill, and it is still quite possible for them to withdraw this Bill and introduce another Bill, which would build into the legislation

they have put before us legislative power for the House of Commons to examine and pass judgment on all future treaties that the Community might wish to conclude.
If the hon. and gallant Gentleman comes to my constituency and reads the manifesto of my Conservative opponent as recently as June, 1970, if he goes through it with a tooth comb and can prove to me that he can find there a sentence which say "If you elect me instead of the sitting Member for Penistone we shall not leave any power to the House of Commons to pass on future treaties that the Community, after entry, will conclude", I will buy him the biggest drink he has ever received. The candidates of the Conservative Party—now that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy has joined in this shoddy argument—were the people who concealed the real implications of this legislation when they fought the last General Election. There was no beginning of any indication that this was what they wanted the House of Commons to be in future, that they wanted to say that such agreements could not be subject to future legislation.
That brings me to the point made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. J. Selwyn Gummer) who made a contribution earlier but who left the Committee about an hour ago. He told the Committee that it would be a very strange community indeed that would not reserve to itself all these treaty-making powers, and he was talking as if this Parliament was asked to join a Community like the E.E.C. twice every year. He made it appear like a Cup Final, an annual event. He made it appear so simple, and said that it would be a very strange Community indeed which would not have all these powers. The hon. Member for Lewisham, West did not sem to understand that, to put it mildly, we are now discussing the power not only of the Community, but of the House of Commons.
We require a serious reply from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is prepared to accept any of the safeguards embodied in the Amendments. We need to hear why the Government are so adamant in refusing Amendment after Amendment. If they are indeed good parliamentarians, if they


want to win, as the Italians put it, the benevolence, the captatio benevolentiae, of the House of Commons and the people of this country, and if they want to win the good opinion of the Committee and perhaps advance the progress of their legislation, why does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman get up and say, "I will accept two of the Amendments and we will see whether they improve the Bill by introducing some of the safeguards which are being demanded and thereby make it a much better Bill"? This is the real answer to the hon. and gallant Member for Lewes (Sir T. Beamish). This is probably the optimum point at which I should close, leaving the onus for what I hope will be a serious reply on the right hon. and learned Gentleman.

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: No one who is a supporter of the Bill—I certainly am—could be honest with himself unless he admitted that we are paying a very heavy price in surrendering parliamentary power in exchange for entry into the Community. I have always recognised that, and so, I believe, did the last Administration. Further study of the famous 1967 White Paper, and so on, confirms me in that view.
Most of the Bill is concerned with the price which we must pay, in view of the negotiations which have taken place, and I think that we should honour our bargain. That certainly goes for the treaties defined in subsection (2)—the present Community treaties and those of the future which are what my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General described as sometimes within the parameters and sometimes within the perimeters. However, whichever it is, I think we know what he means.
The same is true of Clause 2, as far as the regulations are concerned. I, in my humble way, have sought to put down Amendments to make clear the extent of the surrender of parliamentary power which is necessary, because I do not believe that the people, the courts, or anybody else should be under any misapprehension about that. However, it is a price which we must pay, or abandon the whole project. Therefore, the first of these Amendments, to my mind, conflicts with the general purpose of the Bill.
When we come to Amendment No. 83, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), a rather different situation arises. That is a price which we do not have to pay, as I understand it. There is nothing in the bargain which has been struck by my right hon. and learned Friend which requires us to abridge our normal parliamentary procedures for the purpose of treaties which are outside the parameters or perimeters, of whatever it is, of the Community treaties. It is only there that Clause 1(3)B arises. By definition, it is only wholly new treaties not within these parameters or perimeters at all. For that purpose, nothing in the bargain requires us to pay this price.
I believe in a commercial approach: nothing for nothing and precious little for tuppence. Why should we be required to pay this price if we do not have to pay it, for it is, as I understand it, a surrender of parliamentary power?
Therefore, in a brief intervention, more in the nature of a question to my right hon. and learned Friend, may I as one who has up to this point wished him very well, ask whether he will tell us that the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson), about how Community treaties ought to go through the mill of the House, really totally conflict with the ethos or the theology, or whatever the right word is, upon which the Bill is based?
9.30 p.m.
Clause 1(3)B, as I see it, does not. There is an abridgment of parliamentary power that is not necessary. If it is not necessary, why is it desirable? Can my hon. and learned Friend explain why it is desirable if it is not necessary? If it is merely convenience, then I think perhaps he is asking this House to swallow just that bit more than he need and just that bit more, perhaps, than is wise.

[Sir ROBERT GRANT-FERRIS in the Chair]

Mr. John Morris: The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) has raised some very interesting points in his support, as I understand it, of the Amendment of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). I will return in a moment to some of the arguments he has raised.
The whole of this discussion stems from two main propositions. The first is that Parliament is being shorn of its powers. This, I hope, is self-evident and needs no further argument. The second—and we have been told that this needs a substantial amount of consideration—is that subsection (3) in some way operates as a shield to ensure that Parliament is able to preserve a measure of power. This brings us to a third argument—the quality and nature of this particular shield, what it is worth and what is its value.
As regards the first proposition, it is obvious to all of us that by the very fact of proposing to enter the Common Market this Parliament is losing its sovereignty, is being shorn of its powers, and we are dealing with what remains. I must dwell for a moment on the first part of subsection (3), in which is set out the Community treaties as they have been before defined, the whole range of treaties on which the Order in Council shall be conclusive, and that is the end of the matter without further discussion. That indeed removes from the ambit of the House of Commons a whole range of treaties.
This brings us to the next question: what is left after having subtracted all that is covered by the first part of subsection (3)? All hon. Members who have read or have been here during the debates on the remainder of the Clause during the past week or so have heard time after time what is regarded and defined as a Community treaty, but I think it would be well to remind the Committee, even at this stage, of all the matters which are Community treaties and would not be subject to the shield for which the Government claim such credit.
It was suggested by one of my hon. Friends that this was a concession in one way or the other. I find that rather odd, but perhaps we look at these matters in a different light. The matters which are regarded as Community treaties are set out in Part 1 of Schedule 1: the E.C.S.C. Treaty, the E.E.C. Treaty, the Euratom Treaty, the Convention signed at Rome on 25th March, 1957, the Treaty of 8th April, 1965, that signed at Luxembourg on 22nd April, 1970, and lastly:
Any treaty entered into before 22nd January, 1972, by any of the Communities (with or without any of the member States) or, as

a treaty ancillary to any treaty included in this Part of this Schedule, by the member States (with or without any other country).
More of what is removed from the so-called shield is set out in subsection (2)(b). The Treaty of Accession having been signed on 22nd January and the decision of the Council of the same date
relating to the accession of the United Kingdom…and any other treaty entered into by any of the Communities with or without any of the member States, or entered into, as a treaty ancillary to any of the Treaties, by the United Kingdom
drives a coach and four through a great deal of the shield. The terms are so wide and comprehensive that they encompass the interests of this country to such an extent that a great deal of those interests are, by definition, excluded from further debate in the House of Commons.
We are passionately concerned with matters affecting trade, for by tradition we are a great trading nation. Nevertheless matters of this kind, as set out in the Bill, are excluded from our further consideration. What remains after various factors have been excluded? All that remains is
a treaty entered into by the United Kingdom after the 22nd January 1972, other than a pre-accession treaty to which the United Kingdom accedes on terms settled on or before that date, shall not be so regarded unless it is so specified, nor be so specified unless a draft of the Order in Council has been approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.
It seems that we shall be left with the lesser amount of our interest whereas the greater amount will have been covered by treaties or decisions entered into by the Community. What, therefore, is the value, quality and nature of the shield? What protection is left?
I was attracted by the speech of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, supported by the hon. and learned Member for Darwen. They proved that the quality of the power of control remaining to Parliament will be exceedingly limited. Indeed, the only power left in this strictly limited class of treaties will be in relation to provisions which must be ratified by a Resolution of each House of Parliament.
Is it really necessary for the powers of Parliament, for even this limited class of treaties, to be reduced merely to a Resolution in each House? Time and again we have debated Orders in Council


in the limited time and by the very limited rules of our procedure. We shall be in the same position in this case, but with extremely important topics. Why should not Parliament have longer to debate such matters? Has it been part of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster's negotiations that we should be so limited?
Reading the observations of occupants of the Government Front Bench when the example was given of the kind of Community treaties which might be excluded from further deliberation in the House of Commons, one sees that one such example was the treaty entered into with Iran on the import of grapes and caviar; but they ignored the important issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. John Mendelson), which would be of great importance to countries long associated with ourselves. We are deeply and passionately concerned with the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. The mention of grapes and caviar reminds one of the Minister of Agriculture and his fixation at one stage with pigeons—or was it peaches? This is the reduction of the matter, an over-simplification of it, trying to bind the House of Commons to the real loss of powers and trying to raise as examples matters of trivia which will no longer concern us.
Therefore, passionately concerned as we are with the interests of the House of Commons to ensure that it has some remaining functions to examine matters of great importance to this country, I commend the Amendment moved by my right hon. Friend. The House of Commons should give serious consideration to the need for longer deliberation, and a much wider and more detailed examination than would be provided by merely discussing a draft Order in Council. The alternative is for Parliament to be heavily shorn of any influence over the real interests of this country.

Mr. Marten: When my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) intervened on Amendment No. 83, he made the point that he was a pro-European, yet I understood him to say that unless my hon. Friend could give good reason he would be inclined to support—I do not say in the Division Lobby but, anyhow, support—Amendment No. 83.
I want to put to the Committee one other aspect about all this legislation. A few moments ago I looked around and counted on our benches no fewer than eight lawyers. It is really to the lawyers that I wish to direct my remarks. I have here an article on the Bill from the Law Society's Gazette of this month. The article is written by David Green, who describes himself as devoted to the cause of European unity and to the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Community. When one reads this article it seems that the whole proceedings through which we are now going could, in the end, be a joke. The joke is, as this eminent lawer says:
The refusal of the courts to give effect to legislation which is imprecise or ambiguous…is the keystone of British constitutional theory.
My learned and less learned colleagues in the law will recognise that that is the fundamental part of our jurisprudence.
This article then goes on to say:
In essence, the whole body of E.E.C. law is to apply in the United Kingdom, and, where it conflicts with domestic law, it is to prevail.
That we accept and that we know.
This is a notable departure from any historical precedent. In the past the extraterritorial commitment of treaties affecting domestic law has required detailed and specific translation into the language of British jurisprudence before becoming effective internally. The adherence of the United Kingdom to the 1952 Geneva Copyright Convention, for example, was meaningless in British law until its intentions were carried into effect by the 1956 Copyright Act.
9.45 p.m.
I am sure all my hon. and learned Friends would agree with that. The article continues:
Neither the language of the treaties nor that of the E.E.C. Regulations renders them capable of being given effect by any criteria known to our jurisprudence. To do it would involve the mating of utterly dissimiliar juridical species. The E.E.C. Treaties and Regulations … are generalised to an extent that would be the despair of a United Kingdom lawyer.
Despair is a generous word. It would be to their great profit if we entered, because there would be so much discussion amongst the lawyers about this imprecise law to which our courts would not pay any attention that they should have, as I said last week, quite a bonanza. The article continues:
What the proponents of the Bill seem to have forgotten is that ultimately effect must


be given—or denied—to the E.E.C. legislation by United Kingdom courts. One can say with a fair degree of confidence that unless our courts suddenly adopt unprecedented canons of interpretation, much E.E.C. legislation will never be given effect.
This is the big joke of why we are here passing all this legislation, trying to get all the secondary legislation coming into our domestic law, when the courts, as lawyers present are well aware, will not take very much notice of legislation or secondary legislation which is as imprecise as it is in this Community law.

Mr. Deakins: I address myself briefly to Amendment No. 83 and to Amendment No. 2. I shall spend a little more time on the more substantial of the three amendments, namely Amendment No. 83.
By Amendment No. 28 we seek to ensure that Parliament in future shall be able to approve new Community treaties, that is, treaties made by the Communities without any of the member States, particularly the United Kingdom, as co-signatories.
This is a very important and necessary safeguard because many of these treaties made by the Communities in the sphere of trade relationships are gradually extending the scope, power and authority of the Communities in ways in which many of us, perhaps, would not wish to see them extended. We feel that it is only right and proper that any future such treaties should first have to be brought before the House of Commons before approval can be given to them. That is the main purpose of Amendment No. 28.
Regarding Amendment No. 2, it is not clear—not so much from the Amendment but from the particular provision in Clause 1(3) Part B, which the Amendment seeks to remove—what is behind the words that the Amendment would remove. I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to say exactly what is meant by those pre-accession treaties the terms of which were agreed on or before 22nd January, 1972. It is not a question put to him my my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rowley Regis and Tipton (Mr. Peter Archer), but if we are to know what we are discussing on Amendment No. 2 we ought to know what those words mean. On the face of it, there surely cannot be any major substantial treaty in existence the terms of which have already been agreed which has not been published and which is not

known to the House of Commons; yet the words in Part B of subsection (3) must have some purpose and meaning if they are not superfluous. Can it, therefore, be that these are the words some of us have been looking for to cover those Community secondary treaties which have been entered into by the Communities with or without any member States between 10th November, 1971, and 22nd January, 1972?
We are still awaiting the publication of those Community treaties of the few months between late 1971 and early 1972 when we signed the Treaty of Accession. I hope when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster replies he will tell us whether this is a correct interpretation of the words which Amendment No. 2 seeks to delete.
My main purpose is to support Amendment No. 83 which is the most substantial of the Amendments. It is perfectly within the powers of the House of Commons to pass this Amendment without in any way conflicting with any of our existing obligations to the Communities. Perhaps this is a point which would appeal to many hon. Members who are pro-Market in their sympathies. We must ensure that there is adequate parliamentary control of new Community treaties. The Solicitor-General said last week that these fell into the categories of "trivial" and "much more important". But we do not know what types of treaties are likely to come under each head when we are dealing with treaties which have not been made and entered into. We can, however, learn to distinguish between trivial and substantial treaties by looking at one or two of the treaties contained in the 10 volumes of Community treaties which have already been published.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster alluded some time ago to the fact that trade treaty with Iran was relatively trivial. That is broadly accepted by all hon. Members but there are a number of other treaties of much more importance and significance where one could not apply the epithet "trivial" and where we would feel justified in urging that there should be full parliamentary discussion and consideration of them.
I refer first to a number of categories of Community treaty to which the


United Kingdom would be a party in the future and where other existing members of the Community have been co-signatories in the past. These treaties would require full discussion, the ability of the House to amend them and, if necessary, the ability of the House to enact them. They come under a number of broad headings. Some deal with aid and trade with the developing countries which is very important for the future of the world. I do not wish to specify them in detail because I want to come to much more important matters. No one can deny that such treaties, whether treaties in the conventional sense or international agreements, are important both to the future trading relationships of this country with the poorer countries and from the point of view of our moral obligations to those countries.
A number of such treaties, already contained in the 10 volumes, must give cause for concern to anyone who has the interests of the developing countries at heart. There are a number of treaties which seek to implement the generalised preference scheme of the second United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in March and April, 1968.
We find that the Community's attitude to the developing countries, when it comes to imports under a generalised preference scheme, is shabby in the extreme. There is no hint of any generosity. We feel when we look at these treaties, to which we are not yet parties, that the Communities have decided to do the bare minimum to satisfy the U.N.C.T.A.D. requirement of a generalised preference scheme. I hope I have said enough to show that here is a class of treaty which should be capable of full discussion, amendment and, if necessary, enactment by the House of Commons.
There is a second class of treaties, also trade treaties, this time not with developing countries so much as with semi-developed countries and almost fully-developed countries, where the objection that seem hon. Members might have would be not to the actual trading terms but to the political implications. A number of political issues have been raised by several of my hon. Friends. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) spoke

about the treaty with Greece and the treaty with Spain. There are a number of treaties which give at least some hon. Members cause for concern about the future development of the trading relationships of the Communities with the rest of the world. It is only right, therefore, that we should have adequate time for discussing, amending and, if necessary, enacting the provisions embodied in that type of treaty.
I accept that we cannot go back over ground that has already been covered, but we are looking to the future and we have freedom here, if the Government wish, to ensure that these treaties shall be accepted by the House only by virtue of being embodied in legislation.
However, my main purpose in speaking to Amendment No. 83 is to draw attention to an even more important class of treaty, a class mentioned briefly by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), treaties which enlarge the scope and power of operation of the Communities. At present such treaties would be subject only to the affirmative Resolution procedure under subsection (3), part B. But there are two which are so important that their very existence shows that in future we must have some provision for legislation on important treaties entered into by the Communities of which this country will be a co-signatory. I refer to two, The Hague Agreement of December, 1969 and the agreement on economic and monetary union.
Last week I briefly mentioned The Hague Agreement. I do not want to bore the Committee by going over that ground again except to emphasise that the importance of that treaty has not been recognised in the House of Commons. Indeed, the treaty has not yet been debated in the House. It certainly was not a part of any of our Common Market debates, starting last July. Yet that agreement, which automatically passes into the law of this country, is typical of a class of Community treaty which we must be concerned about in the future. To begin with, there is a reference to paving the way to a united Europe. That may be just a vague phrase, typical of the vagueness in community legislation to which the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) referred, but The Hague Conference was such an important conference


that the House would do itself and the people of this country a disservice if it did not accept the implications of what was then decided.
Also in that Hague Agreement the Heads of State agreed to lay down a common financing policy for the common agricultural policy giving the Community its own resources. Whatever one feels about the Common Market and the Communities, no hon. Member could possibly deny—

It being Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put,

That the European Communities Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Eyre.]

The House divided: Ayes 244, Noes 215.

Division No. 87.]
AYES
[10.2 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Fortescue, Tim
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Fox, Marcus
Le Marchant, Spencer


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Fry, Peter
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Archer, Jeffrey (Louth)
Gibson-Watt, David
Lloyd, Ian (P' tsm' th, Langstone)


Astor, John
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Longden, Sir Gilbert


Atkins, Humphrey
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Loveridge, John


Awdry, Daniel
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Luce, R. N.


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Goodhart, Philip
MacArthur, Ian


Balniel, Rt. Hn. Lord
Goodhew, Victor
McCrindle, R. A.


Batsford, Brian
Gower, Raymond
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
McMaster, Stanley


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Gray, Hamish
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)


Benyon, W.
Green, Alan
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Grieve, Percy
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Madel, David


Boscawen, Robert
Grylls, Michael
Marten, Neil


Bossom, Sir Clive
Gummer, J. Selwyn
Mather, Carol


Bowden, Andrew
Gurden, Harold
Maude, Angus


Bray, Ronald
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)


Bryan, Paul
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Miscampbell, Norman


Buck, Antony
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)


Bullus, Sir Eric
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Campbell, Rt. Hn. G. (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Haselhurst, Alan
Moate, Roger


Carlisle, Mark
Havers, Michael
Money, Ernle


Channon, Paul
Hawkins, Paul
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Chapman, Sydney
Hay, John
Monro, Hector


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Heseltine, Michael
Montgomery, Fergus


Churchill, W. S.
Hicks, Robert
More, Jasper


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Higgins, Terence L.
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Cockeram, Eric
Hiley, Joseph
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Cooke, Robert
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Murton, Oscar


Cooper, A. E.
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Holland, Philip
Neave, Airey


Cormack, Patrick
Holt, Miss Mary
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Costain, A. P.
Hordern, Peter
Normanton, Tom


Critchley, Julian
Hornby, Richard
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Crouch, David
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Osborn, John


Curran, Charles
Howe, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Howell, David (Guildford)
Page, Graham (Crosby)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Hunt, John
Pardoe, John


Dean, Paul
James, David
Parkinson, Cecil


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Jessel, Toby
Peel, John


Dixon, Piers
Johneon Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pike, Miss Mervyn


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Pounder, Rafton


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Jopling, Michael
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Dykes, Hugh
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Eden, Sir John
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Kershaw, Anthony
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Kilfedder, James
Raison, Timothy


Emery, Peter
Kimball, Marcus
Redmond, Robert


Fell, Anthony
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Fidler, Michael
Kinsey, J. R.
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Kirk, Peter
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Knox, David
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Lane, David
Ridsdale, Julian


Fookes, Miss Janet
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey




Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
Wall, Patrick


Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Stokes, John
Walters, Dennis


Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Ward, Dame Irene


Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Taylor, Edward M. (G'gow, Cathcart)
Warren, Kenneth


Rost, Peter
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Weatherill, Bernard


Russell, Sir Ronald
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Sharples, Richard
Tebbit, Norman
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)
Temple, John M.
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Shelton, William (Clapham)
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Wiggin, Jerry


Simeons, Charles
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Wilkinson, John


Sinclair, Sir George
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
Winterton, Nicholas


Skeet, T. H. H.
Tilney, John
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Speed, Keith
Trew, Peter
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Spence, John
Tugendhat, Christopher
Woodnutt, Mark


Sproat, Iain
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin
Younger, Hn. George


Stainton, Keith
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Stanbrook, Ivor
Waddington, David
Mr. Reginald Eyre and Mr. Walter Clegg.


Steel, David
Walder, David (Clitheroe)



Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)



Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek





NOES


Abse, Leo
Ewing, Harry
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Faulds, Andrew
Lomas, Kenneth


Allen, Scholefield
Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)


Armstrong, Ernest
Fitt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Ashley, Jack
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
McBride, Neil


Atkinson, Norman
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McCann, John


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Foley, Maurice
McCartney, Hugh


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Foot, Michael
McElhone, Frank


Baxter, William
Ford, Ben
McGuire, Michael


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Forrester, John
Mackie, John


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Fraser, John (Norwood)
Maclennan, Robert


Bidwell, Sydney
Freeson, Reginald
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)


Bishop, E. S.
Gilbert, Dr. John
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Marks, Kenneth


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Marquand, David


Booth, Albert
Grant, George (Morpeth)
Marsden, F.


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund


Bradley, Tom
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Meacher, Michael


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert


Buchan, Norman
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mendelson, John


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Millan, Bruce


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hamling, William
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Hannan, William (G' gow, Maryhill)
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)


Cant, R. B.
Hardy, Peter
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)


Carmichael, Neil
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Moyle, Roland


Carter, Ray (Birmingh' m, Northfield)
Heffer, Eric S.
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Hooson, Emlyn
Murray, Ronald King


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Horam, John
Oakes, Gordon


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Huckfield, Leslie
Ogden, Eric


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
O' Halloran, Michael


Cohen, Stanley
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
O'Malley, Brian


Coleman, Donald
Hunter, Adam
Oram, Bert


Concannon, J. D.
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Orbach, Maurice


Conlan, Bernard
Janner, Greville
Orme, Stanley


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Oswald, Thomas


Cronin, John
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Palmer, Arthur


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
John, Brynmor
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Dalyell, Tam
Johnson, James (K' ston-on-Hull, W.)
Pavitt, Laurie


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Pendry, Tom


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Pentland, Norman


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Perry, Ernest G.


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Deakins, Eric
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Prescott, John


Dempsey, James
Judd, Frank
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Doig, Peter
Kaufman, Gerald
Price, William (Rugby)


Dormand, J. D.
Kerr, Russell
Probert, Arthur


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Kinnock, Neil
Rankin, John


Driberg, Tom
Lambie, David
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Duffy, A. E. P.
Lamond, James
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Eadie, Alex
Latham, Arthur
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Leadbitter, Ted
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br 'c' n &amp; R' dnor)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Roper, John


Ellis, Tom
Leonard, Dick
Rose, Paul B.


English, Michael
Lestor, Miss Joan
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Evans, Fred
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Sandelson, Neville







Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under Lyne)
Strang, Gavin
Wellbeloved, James


Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)
Swain, Thomas
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)
Taverne, Dick
Whitehead, Phillip


Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)
Whitlock, William


Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Sillars, James
Tinn, James
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Silverman, Julius
Tuck, Raphael
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Skinner, Dennis
Urwin, T. W.
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Small, William
Varley, Eric G.
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Spearing, Nigel
Wainwright, Edwin
Woof, Robert


Spriggs, Leslie
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)



Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)
Wallace, George
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Stoddart, David (Swindon)
Watkins, David
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John
Weitzman, David

Question accordingly agreed to.

Orders of the Day — EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES BILL

Again considered in Committee.

Question again proposed, That the Amendment be made.

[Sir ALFRED BROUGHTONin the Chair.]

Mr. Denkins: Before the Division, I was speaking on Amendment No. 83 and pointing out that The Hague Agreement of December, 1969, was in the important category of treaties which could not possibly be dealt with in the House of Commons under the affirmative Resolution procedure. I wish to allude to three provisions in The Hague Agreement before I go to the treaty which establishes economic and monetary union.
First, the Ministers and Heads of State agreed that they should achieve progress in political unification. It is not good enough for any Minister to come to the House of Commons, as have the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, and say that such progress will depend on the will and spirit of the members, that we shall play our part, and so on. Once we have put our shoulders to the wheel it may be debatable whether the form of political unification will be a federation or a confederation, but there can be no denying the fact that the more the Community moves towards political unification the greater will be the derogation of the rights and powers of the House of Commons.
Another point which emerged from The Hague Agreement, which has not been mentioned before in the House, is that the Heads of State agreed that the problem of direct elections would continue to be studied by the Council of Ministers. This relates to the direct elec-

tions of individual member States to the European Parliament. Can anybody say that that issue is not important enough to warrant treatment as a Bill to be presented and put through all its stages?
10.15 p.m.
Then we have the matter of direct elections from the people of this country to a foreign body—in other words, to the European Parliament and the Communities. Surely that alone, apart from the other matters that I have mentioned, would be sufficient in itself to prove my point that here we are dealing with a class of super treaties which cannot possibly be dealt with in future by the affirmative Resolution procedure, because not only would there be insufficient time for debate or amendment; the issue would be far too important to be dealt with in that way.
Finally, the Ministers and Heads of State reaffirmed their desire to promote the development of the Community into an economic and monetary union. This brings me to my main point, which is the treaty of 22nd March, 1971, known as the Resolution of the Council and of the Representatives of the Governments of Member States, published in Volume 5 of the European Communities Treaties, which deals with the initial stages towards an economic and monetary union.
I do not seek to argue for or against an economic and monetary union. I seek merely to show that the issues which arise from the treaty are of such crucial importance to the future of this country and of the House of Commons that they should be considered as part of a Bill and should have been if we had been members of the Community at that time.
Although we cannot lock this stable door on the initial stages to economic and monetary union, I hope to show


briefly why we should make sure in future, if and when this issue arises again in the form of a Community treaty to which this country is a co-signatory, have the right to consider it as we would the Bill that we are now discussing.
If I may, I will quote briefly from that treaty. All members of the Community made it clear that they wanted to see an economic and monetary union and that they were also aware of the full consequences for the economic policies of each member State of progress towards such a union. If that is not an important matter, I do not know what is. They talk about a single monetary union. They talk about the elimination of margins of exchange rate fluctuation. They talk about the irrevocable fixing of relations of parity. They talk about these conditions being indispensable to the creation of a single currency. Surely these are vital issues to the future of this country. If they arose in a future treaty under part B of subsection (3), how could they possibly be dealt with adequately by the affirmative Resolution procedure that the Government suggest?
There is a great deal in that agreement, and I will not bore the Committee with the details. Hon. Members who are interested can read it for themselves. There are, however, references to budgetary and fiscal policies in member countries. It says:
The principles defined"—
that is, for economic and monetary union—
shall be applied to the following matters: budgetary and fiscal policies as related to the policy of stability and growth.
It must not be forgotten that we are talking about the budgetary policy in each individual member State and not in the Community as a whole. They talk of
…the margins within which the essential elements of all the public budget should be located.
Does not that imply for the future, if and when we become members of the Community, that the major outlines of budgetary policy in this country will have to be harmonised with those of the rest of the Community? What is more, if we find ourselves the odd man out, it will be difficult for us, to start with, to pretend that this is a matter of major significance and that therefore the

Luxembourg disagreement whereby France stood out against the rest on matters of vital national interests should apply in this case.
Again, I shall not repeat what hon. Members can read for themselves. But there is no question that the path on which the Community is now set is to move towards the co-ordination not only of short-term but of medium-term economic policies, and there are references in this treaty to obligatory prior consultation. Here again is a power which we shall be giving up—admittedly an Executive power, but it affects the House of Commons as well—that we should decide our own budgetary policy. That will no longer be possible. Furthermore, it is not only the loss of legislative and Executive power from the House of Commons, but the granting of such power to an outside body which also has great significance for the future of this country.
The Council says that it
has agreed to lay down the broad outlines of economic policy at Community level and the quantitative guidelines for the essential element of public budgets.
That means that the Council will be taking upon itself, no doubt guided and advised by the Commission, the decision about the level of public spending in each country within certain limits. They will not put the screws on straight away. No doubt we shall be told that we can expand public expenditure between, say, 2 and 3 per cent. in a particular year. That is the margin of discretion which the House of Commons and the Government will be allowed. It is indeed very generous of them, but it compares unfavourably with the freedom which we now have to decide our own economic policy across the Floor of the House.
There is also a reference in the treaty to value-added tax. I am not saying anything new here. However, I should like to draw attention to the fact that there is a distinct reference in this treaty to proposals concerning the alignment of rates of value-added tax. That is not a matter which so far we have been told would be an inevitable consequence of joining the Common Market and accepting the treaty leading to economic and monetary union. However, it is a fact that one of the powers of the House of Commons, the power of taxation, is in any event to be amended next week by


the introduction of value-added tax which we are obviously bringing in mainly, if not wholly, as a result of our desire to enter the Community.
It is not only the form, but the rates, of taxation which will be affected by this provision in the treaty. I submit that whether we agree with taking away from the House of Commons the power of decision of both rates and forms of indirect taxation, it is at least a matter worthy of considerable discussion in this Chamber in future, and not merely in the short time which may be allowed to right hon. and hon. Members on the affirmative Resolution procedure.

Mr. James Hill: The hon. Gentleman has several times stressed his objection to the procedure of approval by affirmative Resolution, coupling it with references to the short time that is allowed for debate. Does he appreciate that, in dealing with such important topics it is open to Parliament, through the ad hoc committee or the Select Committee on Procedure to make recommendations for considerably longer time to be allowed through the same process of the affirmative Resolution? Therefore, his objections are rather specious.

Mr. Deakins: I take the point. However, we are considering a Bill which, if it becomes an Act, will, so to speak, bind all future Governments. Therefore, it might be open to a future Government to say "We have had the recommendation of the Select Committee on Procedure that five days should be given for a debate on, say, a common currency, but we are short of parliamentary time and we think that it should be dealt with in one or two days". In any event, whatever time may be given, it is the form in which these things are presented to the House which is the important aspect which we should be considering. At the moment we have an opportunity to amend any Bill which is presented to us and, if necessary, to reject particular parts. It is that facility, that right, that power, which will be denied to us under the affirmative Resolution procedure.

Mr. Spearing: Will my hon. Friend make one point clear, because it is important in relation to what he has said about budgetary policy? If, for instance, there were a move for harmonisation of

budgetary policies towards, say, the National Health Service, which is funded as to 80 per cent., would we not be able to discuss the implications of that? Are the Government proposing that we are not to be allowed to discuss something to which we have already agreed in principle by signing the Treaty, and that, in addition, we are not even to be allowed to find out the implications? Will my hon. Friend comment on the implications of what he has suggested?

Mr. Deakins: My hon. Friend raises an important point which I am sure he will wish to develop if he has an opportunity to speak in the debate. If he does not, I am sure that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will wish to discuss it.
I explained on Second Reading that harmonisation is a process that feeds on itself. The more harmonisation that is achieved, the more is desired. Once the civil servants and federalists in Europe and in the House of Commons have the bit between their teeth, there is no telling where the process will end.
We must, therefore, even now consider what checks we shall have on the future ability of the Government to harmonise our laws—our taxation laws and aspects of the social services, and so on—with members of the Community without Parliament having sufficient power to amend, reject in part and fully discuss those issues, which cannot be the case under the affirmative Resolution procedure.
We are constantly told that under this procedure our power is to reject or approve. A future Government may use their majority to ensure that the House of Commons approves, even if a substantial proportion of hon. Members feels that there has not been adequate time for discussion. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West made this point adequately.
Imagine what would have been the position if this Measure had been on the Statute Book by now and we had signed the Treaty of Accession. Under Clause l(3)(b) that treaty would have been brought before us simply in the form of an affirmative Resolution. It cannot be denied that our debates on the treaty these past few weeks have been vitally important. Is it suggested that this discussion could have occurred simply on an affirmative Resolution?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Spearing) pointed out recently, it is uncertain from the working of this subsection whether we shall have power to talk about the substance of the Treaty. The wording might be interpreted merely to mean that we should have the right to say just whether or not it should be one of the Community's treaties.
I support what has been said on both sides of the Committee about the need to ensure adequate parliamentary control. A short discussion is no good. A lengthy discussion is advantageous when considering important future treaties, but discussion of itself is of no avail if, at the end of the day, we simply have the right to reject or approve with no right to amend or reject in part, as distinct from rejecting completely.
What is being suggested is some restriction on the future treaty-making powers of the Government, and we mean any future Government. After all, this country has never before entered into a type of treaty like the Hague Agreement and the agreement covering economic and monetary affairs. One would have thought that these matters require far more than the exercise of prerogative legislation. It is vital that the House of Commons is able to discuss treaties and

agreements of this kind in the way that we discuss Government Bills and Instruments.
Many hon. Members have been here for a lot longer than I have. However, I am sure that I echo their view when I say that we are jealous not only of the rights of the House of Commons but the rights of the citizen. We want to ensure that our constituents feel that their representatives in Parliament can have a proper effect on measures that are introduced on their behalf, whether they emanate from the British Government or another part of Europe.
If we are to be faced in the future with Community treaties to which Britain is a party or co-signatory, which would come before Parliament under Part B of subsection (3), it would be disgraceful if any future Government allowed them to go through under the affirmative Resolution procedure, because we could find ourselves discussing ineffectually, on a sort of consultative basis, the whole future existence and power of this Chamber.
In those circumstances, therefore, I hope that not only shall we support the Amendments but, in particular, we shall have an opportunity of voting not only on Amendment No. 28 but also on the very important Amendment No. 83.

10.30 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Geoffrey Rippon): We have had a wide-ranging debate on these Amendments, which has covered a lot of ground. The hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) has spoken eloquently about the Hague Declaration of 1969. It will be within the Committee's recollection that it was that historic declaration which paved the way for and encouraged the renewal of the Labour Government's application for the United Kingdom to join the European Communities. Many of the matters discussed in that declaration opened up prospects for the future that we shall have to face step by step, being willing and, as has been said by many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite as well as by my right hon. and hon. Friends, ready to go as far and as fast as the best of them.
Naturally enough, too, we have ranged again over the general question of the degree of surrender of sovereignty which is justified in the circumstances of our accession. I have always believed that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was right when he said:
The whole history of political progress is a history of gradual abandonment of national sovereignty.
That, at any rate, has been a tenet for a long time of the internationalists of the party opposite.

An Hon. Member: Rubbish.

Mr. Rippon: The right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore) says that that is rubbish, but it is his Leader's statement.

Mr. Shore: I did not say "rubbish". That remark, taken out of context, is a half truth. But the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I, and the rest of us, have lived through a period in which 1,000 million people have achieved the great prize of self-government in our lifetime. That is progress.

Mr. Rippon: The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition made that observation. It was the end of the quotation from him I was about to refer to, on 25th February, 1970, not so very long ago. Those were the days when he was expressing things rather differently. But he made the point that:

The whole history of political progress is a history of gradual abandonment of national sovereignty.
The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, referring back to a speech he had made in August, 1961, said:
I said then that we abrogated national sovereignty to a degree when we joined the United Nations.
I said then that some people would talk about world government in one breath and then start drooling about the need to preserve national sovereignty in the next. I went on to say:
'The question is not whether sovereignty remains absolute or not, but in what way one is prepared to sacrifice sovereignty, to whom and for what purpose…whether any proposed surrender of sovereignty will advance our progress to the kind of world that we want to see'."—[Official Report, 25th February, 1970; Vol. 796, c. 1326.]
This is the essence of the difference of opinion between the right hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. John Morris) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke). It is essentially the decision that every member of the Committee has to take or has had to take in all our discussions, as to whether the degree to which we are surrendering our national sovereignty in order to enter the Communities is justified by what we hope to achieve, and whether the transfer—what the Leader of the Opposition used to call a limited transfer—of sovereignty is for the good of Britain, Europe and mankind.
It is that question which largely determines the position of each hon. Member on the matter. It is right we should have devoted time to a consideration of the matter. The right hon. Member for Stepney opened his speech with a discussion of the nature of the treaties which are entered into by the Community acting on its own or with other member States. It is important we get these distinctions as clear as possible, although, covering the whole range of treaties made by the Community over a period of years, it is not always easy to get an absolutely clear strand of thought which will put each of them into a simple category. I stated the position accurately on 7th March in the Official Report from column 1394, and I dealt there with the Articles of the treaty under which the various treaties were made. Article 113 deals largely with commercial treaties and Article 238 with the sort of treaties for which unanimity was required.
The right hon. Member for Stepney pointed out that some seemed to be under one and some seemed to be under another, and he asked for clarification about which sort of treaties were concluded under which of these Articles. The 10 volumes of Community treaties with which we are concerned include seven association agreements. I think these were the treaties with which he was primarily concerned. They are with Tunisia, Morocco, Greece, Malta and Turkey, together with the Yaoundéand Arusha agreements. Those with Tunisia, Morocco and Malta were concluded by the Community acting alone, and the other four were concluded by the Community acting together with member States, including the Yaoundé and Arusha agreements.
Most of the trade agreements under Article 113 were concluded by the Community acting alone. This is not invariable and the agreement with the Lebanon was concluded generally with the member States.
I do not think there is any clear distinction of principle in the practice which the Community has followed. Agreements of association are made under Article 238 because of the principle of unanimity but whether or not member States enter into a treaty together with the Community depends upon the particular circumstances of each case, and we certainly cannot judge precisely what future cases will be. I agree that there may be circumstances in which what might be classified as a trade agreement might be of greater significance than an association agreement. But once we are within the Community we will be forming our own judgments about these matters and on important agreements expressing our views as to how they can best be dealt with.

Mr. Powell: If my right hon. and learned Friend is leaving that can he clear up the final point raised with him by the right hon. Member for Stepney (Mr. Shore)? Are all the seven association agreements which he has mentioned made under Article 238 and is it the case, as my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said, that in all of them there would have been an interposition of the United Kingdom parliamentary process? This is a crucial point.

Mr. Rippon: Where a treaty is entered into by the Community alone, whether it is under Article 113 or under Article 238, it is binding upon us without further procedures. When the treaty is entered into with the member States such as in the case of the Yaoundé and Arusha agreements, this is made under an affirmative Resolution by Order in Council.

Mr. Powell: In that case, my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General was not accurate when he said that in the case of agreements made under Article 238 there would be the interposition of the United Kingdom parliamentary process. I am not trying to get at my hon. and learned Friend. I just believe that my right hon. and learned Friend has made it clear that that statement was not correct.

Mr. Rippon: I am not sure whether I have it completely in context. I think I know what my hon. and learned Friend was driving at in that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West has paid a proper tribute to my hon. and learned Friend for the fact that he has given very full and detailed explanations to the Committee. As I remember it, he was talking about Article 238 treaties requiring unanimity and being normal ones to which the member States would adhere, also drawing the distinction between the treaty with Greece, which was an association treaty under Article 238, which the member States were associated with, and the treaty with Spain, which was an Article 113 agreement entered into by the Community without member States. I hope there is no confusion. I think that what I have stated now to be the position is right.

Sir Robin Turton: The remark by my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General was made in answer to an intervention by me. I had drawn attention to the possibility of a Caribbean Sugar Agreement and asked whether Parliament would have any opportunity of passing judgment on such a new agreement after 1974. My hon. and learned Friend said:
I have made it plain that under Article 238 there would be the interposition of United Kingdom parliamentary process."—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1547.]


My right hon. and learned Friend has just said that there would not be interposition of the parliamentary process. This is vital to the whole Caribbean. I hope he will reconsider the matter and at a later stage give us a clear definition of what will happen.

Mr. Rippon: With respect to my right hon. Friend, I did not say there would be no parliamentary process. I explained how there are two Articles under which the Community can enter into treaties—Article 113 and Article 238. Some are entered into by the Community acting alone; some are entered into by the Community with member States. There is no clear distinction of principle between the two. The important thing about Article 238is that it requires unanimity. The other important distinction is that although sometimes trade agreements are more important than association agreements and sometimes vice versa, an agreement of the importance of, for example, the Yaoundé or Arusha agreements under Article 238 has been entered into with the concurrence of member States.
I cannot conceive of circumstances in which an agreement on future sugar arrangements in the context of the association arrangements would not be an agreement entered into by member States. That, I think, would be the view of any United Kingdom Government of either Party as being the right and proper procedure. It depends a little on whether the countries which have been offered association choose to have neither the Yaoundé- nor the Arusha-type association but choose instead to have a straight trade agreement. If they left the negotiations to a straight trade agreement, although we could monitor them, it might be a treaty entered into by the Community alone—but not necessarily.

Mr. Shore: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has made a point about the distinction between Article 238 agreements and Article 113 agreements. In so far as there is a distinction between them, it certainly is not based, as we had previously thought, upon the difference between the Community signing one lot of agreements and the member States attaching their signature to the Article 238 agreements. We are told now that it is vaguer than that. The right hon.

and learned Gentleman then said that the real distinction between the two kinds of treaties is that the Article 238 agreement required unanimity. Would I be right in assuming that trade treaties under Article 113 do not need unanimity? If they do not, surely that invalidates what the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself told the Committee only seven days ago?

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Rippon: Then we have to look, as I have explained very often to the right hon. Gentleman, at the treaty to which we are adhering, at the statute law as it were. As the Leader of the Opposition used to tell us so often, we have to look at the practice which has developed under it. Then we get the question of unanimity and what is sometimes called the Luxembourg Agreement or, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Deakins) said, the Luxembourg disagreement.
These are matters which we have gone over on many occasions, I thought it right to try to clarify the particular point made by the right hon. Member for Stepney. If we look at what my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said in the context of the particular treaties he was discussing and his reference to the fact that normally the Community is dealing on its own with commercial agreements, we see the matter in proper perspective.

Mr. Jay: Mr. Jay rose—

Mr. William Baxter: On a point of order. As it is evident that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is at loggerheads with the interpretation put on this matter by the Solicitor-General, is it not appropriate that we should adjourn the debate to permit the two of them to discuss this question further?

The Temporary Chairman: No, I would not accept a Motion to that effect at this stage.

Mr. Jay: As the right hon. and learned Gentleman, far from clarifying this matter, has confused the Committee still further than at any time so far today, can he clear up this point? As a country on becoming a member of the Community loses its power to make separate


commercial agreements because the Community has a common commercial policy and makes agreements on its own, is it not a fact that the agreement mentioned in connection with the sugar industry and agreements made with New Zealand, would have to be made by the Community and that they would therefore come under the second and not the first part of subsection (3)?

Mr. Rippon: The answer is, not necessarily, because the Community may regard an agreement of that kind as one to which member States might be a party. That is a view which any United Kingdom Government would take.
Turning to Amendments Nos. 28, 2 and 83, the purpose of Amendment No. 28, by which all future treaties, including those concluded by the Community acting alone would require an affirmative Resolution before they were brought within the definition of the Bill, has already been discussed by the Committee when we were dealing with Amendment No. 96. I think I made it clear when dealing with that Amendment, as reported in col. 1393 of the Official Report for 7th March, and the Solicitor-General also dealt with that. So there is no new point of substance which has been raised by Amendment No. 28 which we have not already dealt with. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) justified his Amendment No.83, which has also been discussed in substance already, on the ground that it was the most far-reaching of the three Amendments we are discussing. He said it had been referred to before but not everyone was here at the time. We are getting to the stage when there is a certain amount of repetition on the ground that what was said before has not been heard by everyone, but my right hon. Friend has raised an important point.
Amendment No. 83 would strike out altogether the provision that future treaties entered into by the United Kingdom would be brought within the definition of the Bill by being specified in an affirmative Resolution Order in Council. Such treaties if the Amendment were adopted would need an Act of Parliament if they required a change in the United Kingdom law.
My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General dealt with this matter at some length, and he has been quoted at some length by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, and his speech was referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen. My right hon. and learned Friend read out the first part of what my hon. and learned Friend said:
My hon. Friend, perhaps too generously but not, I think, unintentionally, referred to my encomium of the affirmative order procedures there set out and sought to reduce it to something of no significance. I cannot accept that that is a true view to take of the matter. He referred to the necessity for any change, be it great or small, in the scope of the existing treaties being subjected to the full legislative procedures of the House of Commons.
My hon. and learned Friend went on to say—and this bit my right hon. Friend left out:
That is not either necessary or wise."—[Official Report, 8th March, 1972; Vol. 832, c. 1550.]
He then went on to explain, I hope to the satisfaction of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen, why he thought it was not necessary or wise. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said that the House of Commons was best at saying "Yea" or "Nay", and there is a wide range of matters in these treaties where that is the best way in which the House of Commons can express its views. As has been explained right from our debate on 20th January treaties can be accepted or rejected but they cannot be amended by the House of Commons.
I take my right hon. Friend's point about the possibility of having a formula to distinguish between a host of minor matters which it would not be appropriate to deal with by Act of Parliament and major matters which perhaps should be dealt with by Act of Parliament. There are, as my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General said, a number of possibilities, because the procedure of the House of Commons is very flexible, and the ad hoc committee when it is set up can consider how these procedures can be adapted. We hope that the Opposition will soon make a response to that proposal. It is put forward to enable us to find a formula to determine how best to deal with these matters. I do not think it is possible to distinguish it in an Act of Parliament. As my hon.


and learned Friend suggested, a safeguard is built in whereby if the House does not feel that the Order in Council procedure is satisfactory it can oppose it on that ground and force the Government to introduce legislation.
In terms of the power which my right hon. Friend is always referring to that is the way in which these matters should perhaps in the last resort be determined, but since the Bill does not in any way preclude the Government or Parliament from dealing with a particular matter by Act of Parliament, this is something which can properly be considered by an ad hoc committee or the House of Commons at any time in determining its procedures, but cannot be formulated with any degree of precision in an Act of Parliament.

Mr. Powell: My right hon. and learned Friend overlooks the point that if the Bill goes through in its present form it will be within the power of an Administration at any point of time always to proceed by Resolution. What he calls the safeguard of being able to throw it out is a safeguard which depends upon a majority voting against the Government, whereas the safeguard of legislation is very much more extensive and flexible and gives powers of persuasion and influence to various minorities in the House. I am sure my right hon. and learned Friend sees this fundamental distinction.

Mr. Rippon: I see the point my right hon. Friend is driving at. He will appreciate that the normal procedure of treaties is that they are accepted or rejected. Parliament has no more control than that. We deal with a whole range of treaties—for example, dealing with import duties and the like—by order. There is no such great constitutional innovation here as many hon. Members have suggested. My right hon. Friend has presumably found the difficulty that it is impossible to determine between the host of minor matters which can be dealt with by orders in council and the small number of major matters, involving changes in our law, which should be dealt with properly by Act of Parliament. But it should not be beyond the wit of either this or any future Parliament to determine that in their own way. The Government have to carry these things

through the House of Commons on an "Aye" or "No" procedure.
The only new point of substance in this group of Amendments is contained in Amendment No. 2. It is a new suggestion that an Order in Council should be required for the pre-accession treaties into which we shall enter on terms already settled. Where the terms of the treaties are settled and available to Parliament, the enactment of the Bill will itself constitute the authority for them and there is no need for further procedure. In those cases where the terms are not already settled, there will be either an affirmative Resolution Order in Council or separate legislation under the Bill as drafted. A number of matters still remain to be settled in detail and if these future agreements or arrangements yet to be settled involve any change in United Kingdom law, then, of course they are caught by the second part of subsection (3).

Mr. Fell: My right hon. and learned Friend has said that it should not be beyond the wit of the present Parliament or a future Parliament to devise a method of putting these things before Parliament, through legislation. If he thinks it might be done now, why not accept the Amendment?

Mr. Rippon: What we have suggested through the usual channels is an ad hoc committee—not a permanent committee—to consider how we can deal with matters of procedure for some of these matters. I do not think that we could write into Act of Parliament methods of procedure which might vary from time to time.
During the negotiations, the United Kingdom agreed to accede to a number of agreements already concluded which were within the framework of the Communities, as is recorded in Articles 3 and 4 of the Act concerning the conditions of accession. In most cases, the exact terms on which we shall accede to the agreements have been settled in the negotiations. Sometimes that has involved amendments to the existing treaties, which is what happened to the E.E.C. Treaty itself, and in other cases it has been agreed that we shall accede to the agreement in question without the need for an amendment. In all these cases, the terms on which we shall accede are


already settled and our accession to the agreement and indeed our obligation to accede to them is a commitment which we have undertaken in the treaty itself.
A different procedure applies to existing Community treaties or agreements to which we have not acceded and where we have still to settle terms. Where there are to be further negotiations to settle the terms upon which our accession to the treaties will take place, such a treaty—being a treaty to which we shall accede after 22nd January, 1972, but not on terms settled on or before that date—remains within the requirements of Clause 1(3) requiring that, unless there is to be a separate Bill, there has to be an affirmative Resolution Order in Council.
Therefore, I suggest that the new point of substance put forward in Amendment No. 2 is not necessary because in so far as the terms of our accession to treaties entered into before 22nd January, 1972,have still to be settled in further negotiations, then the affirmative order procedure will be necessary.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Edmund Dell: If the right hon and learned Gentleman is saying that in each of the agreements referred to in Amendment No. 2 the terms have been settled because otherwise it would be necessary to proceed through the affirmative Resolution procedure, instead of describing these agreements in general why cannot he say exactly what they are?

Mr. Rippon: The pre-accession treaties, the terms of which we have settled, include the Treaty of Accession which is covered by the Bill. There are a number of other treaties or agreements, for example Article 200 conventions, where we have not finally settled the terms on which we will accede to those agreements. In those cases there will have to be further negotiations, but in every such case there will have to be an affirmative Resolution Order in Council. This is why I suggest that Amendments Nos. 28 and 83 should be rejected, I advise that Amendment No. 2 should also be rejected, because it is not necessary.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: The difficulty is that we do not know what the

term "settled" means. Does the term mean that matters will be settled over coffee and cognac, or what? Since the phrase is so loose, perhaps we may be told what the right hon. and learned Gentleman takes it to mean.

Mr. Rippon: Where in the negotiations we did not settle the terms on which we would accede, in other words where we still have matters to negotiate, in every case of that kind an affirmative Resolution Order in Council will be required.

Mr. Ronald King Murray: The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster dealt scathingly with the suggestion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) that, because of the absence of certain Members of the Committee, it was necessary to canvass some matters. The Committee's difficulties tonight have been due to the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor-General is absent when the Chancellor of the Duchy is present, and vice versa. If they were to be both present on the Treasury Bench at the same time, we might learn what the Government take this Bill to mean.
I am sure we all enjoy the contributions of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, otherwise known as the guru of Wolverhampton, but his rôle tonight has been more Socratic, and a gentle irony was involved in what he was saying. One thing is crystal clear. It is that once subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 1 have been enacted, it will not be so easy to do the Houdini-type wriggles which seem to be in such favour on the Treasury Bench at present. This involves fall-back strategies and emergency exits by the Government to extricate themselves from the difficulties in which they have been placed by the provisions of the Bill.
After all, if we are going to rely on normal parliamentary procedure as a fallback, let us be sure that it is there to fall back upon. If one looks at the wording of the Bill one will note that it is not, because the second part of subsection (3), or of part B as the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) would have it, is specific and definite in its terms.
It says—and I am paraphrasing: "A Treaty entered into by Prerogative, after


22nd January, 1972, shall not be regarded as a Community treaty unless it is specified by an Order in Council."
It cannot be so specified unless it is approved in draft by Resolution of each House of Parliament. So, even if Parliament says "No", what does one fall back upon? Nothing, because unless Parliament is prepared to amend the European Communities Act as it would then be, and particularly the offending subsection (3), there would be no normal procedure of Parliament on which to fall back.
That is the point the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) made with great force. If there is something to be done to make clear what these vague and tortuous provisions do, let it be done now, while the Bill is in Committee. Do not leave it until later. There may be no later, no second occasion, not merely because of the pressure of business or because of the temptations of power, but because of the legality of what has been done. It is difficult to undo. It needs parliamentary time, too.
The Amendments put before us are reasonable and are necessary to preserve maximum parliamentary control. It is control that matters, not appraisal, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was telling us at Column 1397, on 7th March, last. Appraisal is no good. That is just knowledge. Consultation is no good. It has to be control and that means control by this House—legislative control.
It is true that there is a quotation from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition about gradual sacrifice of sovereignty. Whether all agree with that or do not, it is one matter gradually to sacrifice sovereignty in a rational and strategic way, and another to run madly into a sacrifice of sovereignty unnecessarily. I would ask whether the Government have satisfied the Committee that they are not sacrificing too much, too quickly, and without need.
It would not be too bad if the necessary connection which the Solicitor-General seems to assume between subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 1 existed. If that necessary connection existed, or the obnoxious passage from line 5 to line 8 of page 2 were necessarily qualified by the procedure in subsection 3, it would be different. There is no such connection and it would have to be forged by

Amendments. There are no other Amendments by which we can do it, except these.
The sense of the Committee in the debate has clearly been that if these Amendments are not to be accepted by the Government, some others will have to be brought out at a later stage to justify the undertaking which the Government have given in many contradictory statements to us about the meanings of these provisions.
Prerogative legislation was spoken of. Of course, this Bill involves some paradoxical stage of that kind, but it is important to notice when considering the pipeline connecting London to Brussels, that something will be imposed on us from the Brussels end. Something will be pushed up to this end and something will be sucked up. It will be a two-way traffic.
When one considers that, one realises the prerogative that is legislating is not that of the Crown of this country but that of Brussels. But the prerogative does not stop there. It is not just a pushing down of foreign Community law into this country. It is a sucking up of powers from this House and this country, and some of what is being sucked up is the power to negotiate and conclude treaties. The self-executing Community legislation comes down the pipeline, and the power to negotiate and conclude international treaties is sucked up towards Brussels. This is being delegated from this House.
If one looks at the Articles we have discussed in this debate, Articles 113, 114, 228, 236 and 238, clearly we are delegating to the Commission the power to negotiate treaties which will bind us in ever wider, deeper and more intricate relationships with legal persons of whose existence we do not know at the moment. This will go on automatically once the Bill is enacted. We are delegating a tremendous power to the Commission to negotiate international arrangements. We are delegating our power to conclude such treaties to the Council of Ministers.
In the case of Article 238 treaties, we have the protection of unanimity, but we do not in the case of Article 114.

Dr. John Gilbert: As the distinction between 238 and 114 treaties is such an important one, the first being dependent on unanimity rules and the


second on qualified majority, can my hon. and learned Friend say whether the decision as to which Article of the Treaty of Rome a treaty shall be negotiated under in itself requires unanimity?

Mr. Murray: That is an interesting point, and I will not seek to answer it now. That is probably a difficulty which would be answered blandly by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who would tell us that the Community does not work in that way. He would say that it works in a pragmatic way to achieve the best results for its members.
There is nothing in any of these provisions to require that this country should short-circuit its present parliamentary procedures and constitutional protections. There is nothing to require us to have this short-circuiting procedure provided in subsection (3). If the spirit of the Amendments under discussion were given effect to, one could say that the best thing to do would be to take out these short-circuit methods of trying to speed up business in connection with Community treaties.
It would be better to leave our present parliamentary protections. If we did that, Clause 1 would mean what it says. It would be the Short Title and the interpreting Clause, instead of surreptitiously and unnecessarily entrenching on the real and important protections of Parliament.
The Government have failed to make out their case in this debate as in previous debates on these provisions in Clause 1. One cannot help suspecting the concepts of the Community have already taken their grip of this Committee. In the case of the Government, they are past praying for. They are sold to the concepts of the Community. It is because of this inroad, this sinister shadow of Community ideas, that the debate has moved over to praise of consultation rather than to matters such as deliberation and legislation.
If the Government had had their way, this Bill would have been passed by the consultative debates in this House before the treaty was even published, without anything more than a formal Second Reading. Literally, that is what the Government recommended on the pro-

cedural debates at the beginning of the Committee stage.
Then there is the continental concept of self-enacting law. This suggests the self-enacting Bill, which I suspect is what we have today. It is a formal Second Reading, and the Committee stage is consultative only, with no Amendments. We have managed to stop that, because we have some Amendments which we are debating now. However, it does not help when we are told that the Amendments are really old hat, cold cabbage, or cauld kale het up, as we say in Scotland. It does not help when it is clear that the subjects which we are debating are of vital importance and the Government's position on these provisions changes from day to day. However, we have managed to force a Committee stage on them with some genuine debates on some genuine Amendments which matter to the Committee.
The Government are represented this evening by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is holding out his hands willingly for the handcuffs of self-executing Community law and self-administering Community treaty-making, hoping that the coffee and cognac will not be knocked out of his hands in the process.
I suggest that the Amendments which have been moved are necessary if the Government are to honour what they have said they intend to do under the provisions of Clause 1. They are also necessary to extricate the Treasury Bench from the contradictions into which its occupants have fallen. These contradictions are real. Right hon. and hon. Members who have been present throughout the debate know how deep they run. They must be clarified. I thought that there was much force in the suggestion of one of my hon. Friends that the Committee should adjourn until these contradictions are cleared up.
Finally, I suggest that tonight we have been dealing with substantial new points, even though they may have been in the guise of Amendments which do not seem so original. You will be aware, Sir Robert, that there were some problems about getting debatable Amendments which were in order. Therefore, it is hardly fair to blame those who have tabled Amendments for the fact that they may be uninteresting to look at. The fact is that they have furthered real and


genuine debates, because they have raised new points, and they have revealed that the Government are standing on shifting sand which may turn out to be sinking sand.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Pym rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 216, Noes 196.

Division No. 88.]
AYES
[11.18 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Hall-Davis. A. G. F.
Murton, Oscar


Astor, John
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Atkins, Humphrey
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Neave, Airey


Awdry, Daniel
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Normanton, Tom


Balniel, Lord
Haselhurst, Alan
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Havers, Michael
Osborn, John


Benyon, W.
Hay, John
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Heseltine, Michael
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Biggs-Davison, John
Hicks, Robert
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Higgins, Terence L.
Parkinson, Cecil


Boscawen, Robert
Hiley, Joseph
Pounder, Rafton


Bossom, Sir Clive
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Bowden, Andrew
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Bray, Ronald
Holland, Philip
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Holt, Miss Mary
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hordern, Peter
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hornby, Richard
Raison, Timothy


Bryan, Paul
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Buck, Antony
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Carlisle, Mark
Howell, David (Guildford)
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Channon, Paul
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Chapman, Sydney
Hunt, John
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
James, David
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Churchill, W. S.
Jessel, Toby
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Jopling, Michael
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Clegg, Walter
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Cockeram, Eric
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Rost, Peter


Cooke, Robert
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Russell, Sir Ronald


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Kershaw, Anthony
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Costain, A. P.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Sharples, Richard


Critchley, Julian
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)


Crouch, David
Kinsey, J. R.
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Curran, Charles
Kirk, Peter
Simeons, Charles


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Knox, David
Skeet, T. H. H.


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Lane, David
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Speed, Keith


Dean, Paul
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Spence, John


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Le Merchant, Spencer
Sproat, Iain


Dykes, Hugh
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Stainton, Keith


Eden, Sir John
Lloyd, Ian (P' tsm' th, Langstone)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Longden, Sir Gilbert
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Loveridge, John
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Luce, R. N.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Emery, Peter
MacArthur, Ian
Stokes, John


Eyre, Reginald
McCrindle, R. A.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Farr, John
McLaren, Martin
Taylor, Edward M. (G' gow, Cathcart)


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
McMaster, Stanley
Tebbit, Norman


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Temple, John M.


Fortescue, Tim
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Forest)
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Fox, Marcus
Madel, David
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Fry, Peter
Marten, Neil
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Gibson-Watt, David
Mather, Carol
Tilney, John


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Maude, Angus
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Trew, Peter


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Tugendhat, Christopher


Goodhart, Philip
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Goodhew, Victor
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Gower, Raymond
Miscampbell, Norman
Waddington, David


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Gray, Hamish
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Green, Alan
Moate, Roger
Ward, Dame Irene


Grieve, Percy
Money, Ernle
Warren, Kenneth


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Grylls, Michael
Monro, Hector
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Gummer, Selwyn
Montgomery, Fergus





Wiggin, Jerry
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Wilkinson, John
Woodnutt, Mark
Mr. Bernard Weatherill and Mr. Paul Hawkin


Winterton, Nicholas
Younger, Hn. George



Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick






NOES


Abse, Leo
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Ogden, Eric


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
O'Halloran, Michael


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Hamling, William
O'Malley, Brian


Armstrong, Ernest
Hardy, Peter
Orme, Stanley


Atkinson, Norman
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Oswald, Thomas


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Heffer, Eric S.
Paget, R. T.


Barnett. Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Hooson, Emlyn
Palmer, Arthur


Baxter, William
Horam, John
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Pardoe, John


Bennett, James (Glasgow Bridgeton)
Huckfield, Leslie
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Bidwell, Sydney
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Pavitt, Laurie


Bishop, E. S.
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Hunter, Adam
Pendry, Tom


Booth, Albert
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Pentland, Norman


Bradley, Tom
Janner, Greville
Perry, Ernest G.


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg


Buchan, Norman
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Prescott, John


Buchanan, Richard (G' gowf Sp' burn)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Price, William (Rugby)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Probert, Arthur


Cant, R. B.
John, Brynmor
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Carmichael, Neil
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Carter, Ray (Birmingh' m, Northfield)
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Jonas, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br 'c' n &amp; R' dnor)


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Roper, John


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Rose, Paul B


Cohen, Stanley
Judd, Frank
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Coleman, Donald
Kaufman, Gerald
Sandelson, Neville


Concannon, J. D.
Kelley, Richard
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Conlan, Bernard
Kerr, Russell
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Kinnock, Neil
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Lambie, David
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Lamond, James
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Dalyell, Tam
Latham, Arthur
Sillars, James


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Leadbitter, Ted
Silverman, Julius


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Leonard, Dick
Skinner, Dennis


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Small, William


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Spearing, Nigel


Deakins, Eric
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Spriggs, Leslie


Dempsey, James
Lomas, Kenneth
Stallard, A. W.


Doig, Peter
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Steel, David


Dormand, J D.
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Strang, Gavin


Driberg, Tom
McBride, Neil
Swain, Thomas


Duffy, A. E. P
McCartney, Hugh
Taverne, Dick


Eadie, Alex
McElhone, Frank
Thompson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Edwards William (Merioneth)
McGuire, Michael
Tinn, James


Ellis, Tom
Mackie, John
Tuck, Raphael


English, Michael
Maclennan, Robert
Urwin, T. W.


Evans, Fred
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Varley, Eric G.


Ewing, Harry
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Wainwright, Edwin


Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Marks, Kenneth
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Marquand, David
Watkins, David


Fitt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)
Marsden, F.
Wellbeloved, James


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
White, James (Glasgow Pollok)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Meacher, Michael
Whitehead Phillip


Foley, Maurice
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Roben
Whitlock, William


Foot, Michael
Mendelson, John
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Ford, Ben
Millan, Bruce
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Forrester, John
Molloy, William
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Freeson, Reginald
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Woof, Robert


Gilbert, Dr. John
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)



Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Moyle, Roland
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Murray, Ronald King



Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Oakes Gordon

Question put accordingly,

That the Amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 202, Noes 216.

Division No. 89.]
AYES
[11.28 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Ogden, Eric


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
O' Halloran, Michael


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Hamling, William
O'Malley, Brian


Armstrong, Ernest
Hardy, Peter
Orme, Stanley


Atkinson, Norman
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Oswald, Thomas


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Heffer, Eric S.
Paget, R. T.


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Hooson, Emlyn
Palmer, Arthur


Baxter, William
Horam, John
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Huckfield, Leslie
Pavitt, Laurie


Bidwell, Sydney
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Biffen, John
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Pendry, Tom


Bishop, E. S.
Hunter, Adam
Pentland, Norman


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Perry, Ernest G.


Booth, Albert
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Bradley, Tom
Janner, Greville
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Prescott, John


Buchan, Norman
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Price, William (Rugby)


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Probert, Arthur


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Cant, R. B.
John, Brynmor
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Carmichael, Neil
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanion)


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br 'c' n &amp; R dnor)


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Roper, John


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Rose, Paul B.


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Judd, Frank
Ross, Rt. Hn, William (Kilmarnock)


Cohen, Stanley
Kaufman, Gerald
Sandelson, Neville


Coleman, Donald
Kelley, Richard
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Concannon, J. D.
Kerr, Russell
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Conlan, Bernard
Kinnock, Neil
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Lambie, David
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Lamond, James
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Latham, Arthur
Sillars, James


Dalyell, Tam
Leadbitter, Ted
Silverman, Julius


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Leonard, Dick
Skinner, Dennis


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Small, William


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Spearing, Nigel


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Spriggs, Leslie


Deakins, Eric
Lomas, Kenneth
Stainton, Keith


Dempsey, James
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Stallard, A. W.


Doig, Peter
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Dormand, J. D.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Strang, Gavin


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
McBride, Neil
Swain, Thomas


Driberg, Tom
McCartney, Hugh
Taverne, Dick


Duffy, A. E. P.
McElhone, Frank
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G (Dundee, E.)


Eadie, Alex
McGuire, Michael
Tinn, James


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Mackie, John
Tuck, Raphael


Ellis, Tom
Maclennan, Robert
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


English, Michael
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Urwin, T. W.


Evans, Fred
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Varley, Eric G.


Ewing, Henry
Marks, Kenneth
Wainwright, Edwin


Fell, Anthony
Marquand, David
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Marsden, F.
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Watkins, David


Fltt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)
Marten, Neil
Wellbeloved, James


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Meacher, Michael
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Whitehead, Phillip


Foley, Maurice
Mendelson, John
Whitlock, William


Foot, Michael
Millan, Bruce
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Ford, Ben
Moate, Roger
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Forrester, John
Molloy, William
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Freeson, Reginald
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Woof, Robert


Gilbert, Dr. John
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)



Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Moyle, Roland
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Murray, Ronald King



Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Oakes, Gordon





NOES


Adley, Robert
Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Balniel, Lord
Boscawen, Robert


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Bossom, Sir Clive


Astor, John
Benyon, W.
Bowden, Andrew


Atkins, Humphrey
Berry, Hn. Anthony
Bray, Ronald


Awdry, Daniel
Biggs-Davison, John
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher







Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Pardoe, John


Bryan, Paul
Holland, Philip
Parkinson, Cecil


Buck, Antony
Holt, Miss Mary
Pounder, Rafton


Carlisle, Mark
Hordern, Peter
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Channon, Paul
Hornby, Richard
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Chapman, Sydney
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Chrisstopher
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Churchill, W. S.
Howell, David (Guildford)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Raison, Timothy


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hunt, John
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Clegg, Walter
James, David
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Cockeram, Eric
Jessel, Toby
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Cooke, Robert
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Costain, A. P.
Jopling, Michael
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Critchley, Julian
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Crouch, David
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Curran, Charles
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Kershaw, Anthony
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Rost, Peter


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Dean, Paul
Kinsey, J. R.
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Kirk, Peter
Sharples, Richard


Dykes, Hugh
Knox, David
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)


Eden, Sir John
Lane, David
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Simeons, Charles


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Skeet, T. H. H.


Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Le Marchant, Spencer
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)


Emery, Peter
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Speed, Keith


Eyre, Reginald
Lloyd, Ian (P 'tsm' th, Langstone)
Spence, John


Farr, John
Longden, Gilbert
Sproat, Iain


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Loveridge, John
Stanbrook, Ivor


Fidler, Michael
Luce, R. N.
Steel, David


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
MacArthur, Ian
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
McCrindle, R. A.
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Fortescue, Tim
McLaren, Martin
Stoddart-Scolt, Col. Sir M.


Fox, Marcus
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Stokes, John


Fry, Peter
McMaster, Stanley
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Gibson-Watt, David
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Tebbit, Norman


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Temple, John M.


Godber, Rt. Hn. J.B.
Madel, David
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Goodhart, Philip
Mather, Carol
Thomas, John Stradiing (Monmouth)


Goodhew, Victor
Maude, Angus
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Gower, Raymond
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Tilney, John


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Gray, Hamish
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Trew, Peter


Green, Alan
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Tugendhat, Christopher


Grieve, Percy
Miscampbell, Norman
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C. (Aberdeenshire, W)
Waddington, David


Grylls, Michael
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Gummer, Selwyn
Money, Ernle
Ward, Dame Irene


Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Warren, Kenneth


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Monro, Hector
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Montgomery, Fergus
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Wiggin, Jerry


Hannam, John (Exeter)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Wilkinson, John


Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Murton, Oscar
Winterton, Nicholas


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Haselhurst, Alan
Neave, Airey
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Havers, Michael
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Woodnutt, Mark


Hay, John
Normanton, Tom
Younger, Hn. George


Heseltine, Michael
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally



Hicks, Robert
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Higgins, Terence L.
Osborn, John
Mr. Bernard Weather hill and Mr. Paul Hawkins


Hiley, Joseph
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)




Page, Graham (Crosby)

Question accordingly negatived.

[Mr. JOHN BREWIS in the Chair]

Mr. Powell: I beg to move Amendment No. 83, in page 2, leave out lines 18 to 20.

Mr. Peter Archer: On a point of order. Do I understand that you are not proposing to allow a Division on Amendment No. 2, Mr. Brewis?

The Temporary Chairman: Amendment No. 2 has not been selected.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The Committee proceeded to a Division—

Mr. Archer: (seated and covered): While I do not question your selection.


Mr. Brewis, may I invite you to reconsider your decision whether to permit a Division on Amendment No. 2? The Amendment was selected for discussion and the point at issue is quite different from the other Amendments in the group. It is a matter on which there is clearly a division of view in the Committee.

The Temporary Chairman: I am sorry. I would have liked to call the Amendment but it was not selected by the Chairman of Ways and Means and I cannot comply with the hon. and learned Member's request.

The Committee having divided: Ayes 202, Noes 213.

Division No. 90.]
AYES
[11.30 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
O'Halloran, Michael


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
O'Malley, Brian


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Hamling, William
Orme, Stanley


Armstrong, Ernest
Hardy, Peter
Oswald, Thomas


Atkinson, Norman
Harrison, Waller (Wakefield)
Paget, R. T.


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Heffer, Eric S.
Palmer, Arthur


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Hooson, Emlyn
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Baxter, William
Horam, John
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Pavitt, Laurie


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Huckfield, Leslie
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Bidwell, Sydney
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Pendry, Tom


Biffen, John
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Pentland, Norman


Bishop, E. S.
Hunter, Adam
Perry, Ernest G.


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Booth, Albert
Irvine, Rt. Hn. SirArthur (Edge Hill)
Prentice, Rt. Hn. Reg.


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Janner, Greville
Prescott, John


Buchan, Norman
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Price, William (Rugby)


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Probert, Arthur


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Cant, R. B.
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Carmichael, Neil
John, Brynmor
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Carter, Ray (Birmingh' m, Northfield)
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Roberts, Rt. Hn. Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br 'c' n &amp; R' dnor)


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Roper, John


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Rose, Paul B.


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Jones, A. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Cohen, Stanley
Judd, Frank
Russell, Sir Ronald


Coleman, Donald
Kaufman, Gerald
Sandelson, Neville


Concannon, J. D.
Kelley, Richard
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Conlan, Bernard
Kerr, Russell
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Kinnock, Neil
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Lambie, David
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Lamond, James
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Dalyell, Tam
Latham, Arthur
Sillars, James


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Leadbitter, Ted
Silverman, Julius


Davies lfor (Gower)
Leonard, Dick
Skinner, Dennis


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Lestor, Miss Joan
Small, William


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham. N.)
Spearing, Nigel


Deakins, Eric
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Spriggs, Leslie


Dempsey, James
Lomas, Kenneth
Stainton, Keith


Doig, Peter
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Stallard, A. W.


Dormand, J. D.
Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Strang, Gavin


Driberg, Tom
McBride, Neil
Swain, Thomas


Duffy, A. E. P
McCartney, Hugh
Taverne, Dick


Eadie, Alex
McElhone, Frank
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Mackie, John
Tinn, James


Ellis, Tom
Maclennan, Robert
Tuck, Raphael


English, Michael
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


Evans, Fred
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Urwin, T. W.


Ewing, Henry
Marks, Kenneth
Varley, Eric G.


Fell, Anthony
Marquand, David
Wainwright, Edwin


Fernyhough, Rt. Hn. E.
Marsden, F.
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B' ham, Ladywood)
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fitt, Gerard (Belfast, W.)
Marten, Neil
Watkins, David


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Meacher, Michael
Wellbeloved, James


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Foley, Maurice
Mendelson, John
Whitehead, Phillip


Foot, Michael
Millan, Bruce
Whitlock, William


Ford, Ben
Moate, Roger
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Forrester, John
Molloy, William
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Freeson, Reginald
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Gilbert, Dr. John
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Woof, Robert


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Moyle, Roland



Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Murray, Ronald King
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Golding.


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Nabarro, Sir Gerald




Oakes, Gordon




Ogden, Eric





NOES


Adley, Robert
Hall-Davies, A. G. F.
Normanton, Tom


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Astor, John
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Osborn, John


Atkins, Humphrey
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Awdry, Daniel
Haselhurst, Alan
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Havers, Michael
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Balniel, Lord
Hawkins, Paul
Pardoe, John


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Hay, John
Parkinson, Cecil


Benyon, W.
Heseltine, Michael
Pounder, Rafton


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Hicks, Robert
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Biggs-Davison, John
Higgins, Terence L.
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S.W.)
Hiley, Joseph
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Boscawen, Robert
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Bossom, Sir Clive
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Bowden, Andrew
Holland, Philip
Raison, Timothy


Bray, Ronald
Holt, Miss Mary
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Hordern, Peter
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hornby, Richard
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Bryan, Paul
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Buck, Antony
Howell, David (Guildford)
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Carlisle, Mark
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Channon, Paul
Hunt, John
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Chapman, Sydney
James, David
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Jessel, Toby
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Churchill, W. S.
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Rost, Peter


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Jopling, Michael
Sharples, Richard


Clegg, Walter
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)


Cockeram, Eric
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Cooke, Robert
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Simeons, Charles


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Kershaw, Anthony
Skeet, T. H. H.


Costain, A. P.
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)


Critchley, Julian
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Speed, Keith


Crouch, David
Kinsey, J. R.
Spence, John


Curran, Charles
Kirk, Peter
Sproat, Iain


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Knox, David
Stanbrook, Ivor


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Lane, David
Steel, David


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Dean, Paul
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Le Marchant, Spencer
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.


Dykes, Hugh
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Stokes, John


Eden, Sir John
Lloyd, Ian (P 'tsm' th, Langstone)
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Longden, Gilbert
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Loveridge, John
Tebbit, Norman


Elliott, R. W. (N 'c' tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Luce, R. N.
Temple, John M.


Emery, Peter
MacArthur, Ian
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret


Eyre, Reginald
McCrindle, R. A.
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Farr, John
McLaren, Martin
Tilney, John


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Fidler, Michael
McMaster, Stanley
Trew, Peter


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Tugendhat, Christopher


Fletcher-Cooke Charles
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Fortescue, Tim
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Waddington, David


Fox, Marcus
Madel, David
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Gibson-Watt, David
Mather, Carol
Ward, Dame Irene


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Maude, Angus
Warren, Kenneth


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Weatherill, Bernard


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Goodhart, Philip
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Goodhew, Victor
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Wiggin, Jerry


Gower, Raymond
Miscampbell, Norman
Wilkinson, John


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C. (Aberdeenshire, W)
Winterton, Nicholas


Gray, Hamish
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Green, Alan
Money, Ernle
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Grieve, Percy
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Woodnutt, Mark


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Monro, Hector
Younger, Hn. George


Grylls, Michael
Montgomery, Fergus



Gummer, Selwyn
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Mr. Oscar Murton and


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Neave, Airey
Mr. John Stradling Thomas



Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael

Question accordingly negatived.

11.45 p.m.

The Temporary Chairman: The next Amendment selected is No. 3, with which the following Amendments may be discussed: No. 175, in page 2, line 20, at end insert:
(4) Any Community treaty within the meaning of this section, other than the pre-accession and accession treaties, shall be referred in draft or immediately after publication to a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Community Treaties for scrutiny and report, and until such report has been considered and approved by Parliament, the procedure provided in subsection (3) above shall not be followed.
No. 177, in line 20, at end insert:
(4) Notwithstanding anything contained in subsection (3) hereof where any treaty is required under Article 228 of the European Economic Community Treaty to be considered by the Assembly then it shall be debated by each House of Parliament before such consideration.

Mr. Dell: I beg to move Amendment No. 3, in page 2, line 18, after second 'unless' insert:
before such treaty has been entered into.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, when speaking to the last Amendment, said that there were issues in this debate which came up again and again because certain hon. Members had not been present during part of the earlier debates. I have to confess that, through no fault of mine and despite the importance of this legislation, I have been present during very little of the debate because I have had other duties elsewhere in the House. Therefore, if the right hon and learned Gentleman finds that I raise matters which have already been raised, that is the reason. One can read what has been said in past sittings of the Committee, but one cannot know what has been said relevant to the Amendment during the proceedings of the Committee today. Apparently things have been said today which throw further light on Clause 1(3),
I begin by stating the position as I understand it and will then indicate the way in which the Amendment is intended to change that position. We have within Clause 1(3) what has come to be called part A and part B. Part A deals with self-enacting Community treaties which are to be specified in Orders in Council which will be conclusive for that purpose. Part B deals with treaties to which the United Kingdom is a party and

Orders in Council in that case will specify but will not be able to specify without benefit of the affirmative procedure. To that the Solicitor-General has added the point that if a treaty is of such importance that the affirmative procedure would not be appropriate, it is the Government's intention that that treaty should be dealt with by means of an Act of Parliament.
The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) asked whether in practice the Government would use the Act of Parliament procedure where the affirmative procedure was available. One object of my Amendment is to ensure that that decision is made at an early stage of the consideration of a treaty that it is proposed to enter into so that at an earlier stage than is provided within the Bill as it stands Parliament shall have a voice in that question.
The Amendment is intended to ensure first that before the United Kingdom Government have committed themselves to a treaty which may significantly extend United Kingdom commitments within the Communities, Parliament shall have an opportunity of pronouncing upon it. In other words, the signature of such Community treaties would not be simply a prerogative act but an act of the Government taken with parliamentary approval because of the importance or potential importance of the treaty.
Secondly, the Amendment would force the Government to decide before such a treaty was entered into whether it required an Act of Parliament and not simply the affirmative procedure. It would be necessary for the Government before the treaty had been entered into to override part B of Clause 1(3) as it would be amended by the Act of Parliament giving approval to the treaty. In other words, the Amendment attempts to force the Government to make the vital distinction between what is trivial and can appropriately be dealt with by affirmative procedure and what can be seen to be important at an early stage and will require to be dealt with by Act of Parliament.
The Amendment is also related to the essential question of the relations between Parliament and the Executive when the United Kingdom is a member


of the Community. Even now the Government have far too great a power over Parliament, and this power will be increased by our entry into the Community unless special provision is made to avoid that result. Parliament has too little control over the Executive and it will have less control over the Executive when we are in the Community unless provision is made to secure parliamentary control.
The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) said in an earlier debate that he accepted, as I accept, that some sacrifice of parliamentary control was an essential cost of entry into the Community. That is part of the calculation of the cost against the benefit that one has to make in considering the question of entry. There is no reason why we should make any unnecessary sacrifices of parliamentary control.
One might ask what is the greater constitutional issue raised by entry. Is it the problem of national sovereignty, which has many times been debated, or is it the problem of parliamentary control over the Executive? I believe that the main question currently raised by entry is that of parliamentary control over the Executive. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West said, probably truly, that the affirmative procedure gives little power because the Government, with their majority, will force their measures through. It is a fundamental fact about the House of Commons that Governments with majorities force measures through now, and unless proper provision is made it will become easier for them to force measures through when we are in the Community.
One has to consider the question of the sacrifices of national sovereignty in the context of entry. One may decide, as I have, that such sacrifices are justifiable if the benefits are commensurate, as I hope they will turn out to be. I do not in principle object to self-enacting provisions. Indeed it seems to me that if one is to enter into a body like the E.E.C. it is sensible to have them because otherwise minor questions will hold up progress quite unnecessarily, perhaps not in the United Kingdom Parliament but perhaps elsewhere, although I have occasionally seen, in my experience in

the House, trivial questions holding up the progress of Government legislation by deliberate intent of the Opposition. So even under our system there is the possibility of trivial questions holding up progress.
As I say, I do not object to the principle of self-enacting legislation. It is clear that these self-enacting treaties will be accepted and obeyed in this country only because Parliament, through enabling legislation, has said that they should be. Self-enacting decisions raise the question of national sovereignty, just as commercial treaties signed by the Community on our behalf raise the question of national sovereignty. But the real questions of national sovereignty are for the future and are not raised in substantial degree now. There are many ways in which the Community can develop. Federalism is one way, for example. Equally the Community could continue as an association of sovereign States. These I regard still as open questions and I do not consider that by my vote on 28th October I committed myself on them.
The immediate problem which membership raises is the question of the relations between Parliament and the Executive. The institutions of the Community do not provide, nor, as I see it, in the foreseeable future will they provide, adequate mechanisms of democratic control. Therefore it is the relations between Parliament and the Executive which are decisive.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) earlier today divided those in favour of entry into those he called authoritarians and those he called democrats. I understood him to mean by the latter those who supported the idea of an elected European Parliament. I suggest that there is a third group—those who, like myself and those who have put their names to the Amendment, think that one of the essential elements in entry, and an essential element even if we were not going to enter, is the problem of parliamentary control over the Executive. Membership could greatly strengthen the Executive and weaken Parliament. For these reasons it is doubly necessary that care should be taken of the issue of the power of Parliament over the Executive.

12 midnight

My criticism of the Bill is that the Government have not directed themselves to dealing with this issue. We should not for the purposes of entry make unnecessary sacrifices of parliamentary power. The Government should have been sensitive enough to realise that this essential factor should have been taken account of in legislation.

Mr. Deakins: There could not be a draft Order in Council under part B of subsection (3), even if the Amendment went through, until a provisional Community treaty were virtually ready for signature. Under the existing subsection (3) B, even without the Amendment Parliament could debate the draft Order in Council once the treaty were signed. This Amendment provides for our debating the matter before the treaty is signed. What possible advantage is there in debating a treaty which has been agreed but not signed under a draft order? There would be no right to amend the draft order.

Mr. Dell: I tried to indicate earlier two purposes which the Amendment seeks to achieve. The first is to bring forward the affirmative procedure if it is appropriate to an earlier stage. The second is to force the Government at an earlier stage to decide whether an Act of Parliament is necessary. Acceptance of this Amendment would mean that the Government would be compelled to introduce an Act of Parliament to override Clause 1(3).
I feel that the Government's last-minute thoughts about an ad hoc committee will be inadequate to deal with the problem. The protection needs to be incorporated in legislation. Amendment No. 3 is only one possible Amendment for this type of legislation. Nevertheless, it indicates the type of Amendment which the Bill needs to strengthen the position of Parliament.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Although I do not propose to take up very much of the time of the Committee, I feel it would be churlish of me not to preface my few remarks with a warm welcome to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell). At this witching hour of mid-night on the sixth day of the Committee's proceedings, we now see more pro-Marketeer Opposition Members than we have seen in the whole of these proceedings. When I look at the right hon.

Gentleman I feel like echoing what Disraeli said about Peel, and I am sure with equal sincerity:
The theme, the occasion, the speaker—what a felicitous combination.
I welcome those pro-Marketeers here. If we go on like this for another few weeks or months we may have the pleasure of seeing the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins) at our proceedings, always assuming that he can spare the House of Commons a few moments from his tours of the favoured watering places whence he brings down the tablets of stone. So far, I am afraid, the activity of pro-Marketeer Opposition Members in these proceedings has been to scurry, a little furtively perhaps—I do not want to be unkind—through the Division Lobby.

Mr. Stanley Orme: My right hon. Friend is not present, but the constituency from which he set out on his tour of watering places is represented on this occasion.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Then he is present by proxy.

Mr. John Roper: The Manchester Ship Canal has been graced with many names on many occasions but has never been known as a watering place.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Perhaps I should have said it was a watery place instead of a watering place.
The hon. Gentlemen to whom I venture to refer are constantly devaluing the vote of 28th October and making it more clear that it is just as much a fallacy to say that entry commands the full-hearted consent of Parliament as it is to say that it commands the full-hearted consent of the people.
We are concerned in this Amendment with part B as we call it of Clause 1(3), which is important because it is the only effective part of the subsection, the other being evidential only. It is important that part B bites as effectively as possible and gives a genuine measure of parliamentary control for future treaties. These treaties are entered into by prerogative act and, once entered into for the purposes of Clause 2(1), they can spawn in illimitable profusion, self-executing regulations which, contrary to all our practices and precedents, bind the people of this country


without the intervention of Parliament and the courts.
The important element in the efficacy of parliamentary control is the element of time to which the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment is directed—the time at which this single solitary control can be exercised. The principle is clear—the earlier that control can be applied in the process of treaty-making, the more efficacious it is likely to be. If the thing is to be nipped at all, it is most likely to be nipped if it is nipped now, in the bud as it were. The Bill as drafted is silent as to the time at which or within which parliamentary control is to be exercised.
There are three theoretical possibilities, that control be exercised before the signing of a treaty; between signature and ratification; or, as a theoretical possibility, that it be exercised after ratification. We can speedily dismiss the last possibility in that, on ratification, parliamentary control of a treaty passes, although in the ordinary way Parliament still retains control of the consequential provisions in domestic law. Our effective choice is therefore between the first two, between ensuring that parliamentary control is exercised either before signature or between signature and ratification.
The drafting of the subsection as it stands leaves the options open, and that seems to be undesirable. I think that the parliamentary control should be exercised before signing, so far as it is possible, otherwise commitments, implied commitments and quasi-commitments will be invoked by Governments to limit or inhibit the reality of any parliamentary control at all. These commitments would be invoked by Governments if the approval of the draft Order in Council were allowed, by the wording of subsection (3), to be postponed until after the signing of the treaty.
I refer to Governments in the plural because in all these matters we are looking ahead to posterity. Governments, of whichever party, will be subject to these same temptations which beset Executives in power, wherever they are seated. Governments certainly will pray in aid the position as stated in Oppenheim's International Law, page 910 of the 8th Edition of which states:
These obligations do not impair the right of States to refuse ratification to a treaty signed

by them…But they prevent Governments from signing a treaty and subsequently conducting themselves as if they had no concern with it, or as if their signature were a mere act of authentication.
In the article which I had the privilege of writing for The Times in January on these matters, I used the homely analogy of a contract and conveyance in the purchase of a house. The contract does not pass the freehold, but it establishes a certain situation on which is difficult to go back. Therefore, if Governments are allowed to postpone parliamentary control until after signature, undoubtedly they will invoke these commitments and implied commitments as a reason for Parliament having to leave well alone.
The conclusion which I draw from this is that it is vital that the safeguard of Part B of subsection (3), such as it is—and it is the only one—be introduced before the obligations to which Oppenheim refers arise: that is to say, before signing. I apprehend that this is what the Amendment is intended to do.
Of course, it would have been better as a matter of drafting if the right hon. Gentleman had used the words "before signing" instead of "before entered into". I appreciate that the words "entered into" are used in subsection (3), but they are ambiguous and they are not used uniformly in the Bill. In Schedule 1 the word "signed" is used in paragraphs 1 to 6 and the words "entered into" are used in paragraph 7. Oppenheim does not use the words "entered into" He uses the word "concluded".
Oppenheim says:
There are two views as to whether a treaty is concluded on signing or whether it is only concluded after ratification.
He comes down in favour of the former. That being so, it is probably safe to assume that the Amendment in its present form would meet the desired object of imposing the liability of seeking approval before signature of a treaty; that is to say, when it is ready but has not been formally signed and executed, which is the most effective moment for imposing some degree of parliamentary control.
It would have been better for clarity and certainty to have substituted the word "signed" for "entered into". In any event, the Amendment is to some extent a


second best because the more radical Amendments which we have been denied would have made unnecessary this Amendment and would have substituted full legislative control which is the only effective control that we can have. But I think that some such measure as this is a better safeguard than none. Certainly it is better than that which is in the Bill at present.
12.15 a.m.
Sir Alfred, you and I have been Members of the House of Commons for some time, though not as long as my right hon. Friend the Father of the House. In all those years we have lived in the tradition that it is not for private Members to get right all the niceties and nuances of drafting. It is for them to establish a principle and for Ministers, with all the resources at their command of officials and parliamnetary draftsmen and so on, to assume the obligation of putting these things right. So let us not worry too much about drafting. These things are put right by Ministers in the tradition of the House. We know when they are put right by Ministers. They are put right on Report. No doubt the Government are keenly anxious to have a full and active Report stage on this momentously important and unique piece of legislation.
If it is not to be put right on Report, there is a still further opportunity in the other place. After all, the Government will have some duty and responsibility when this Measure reaches the other place to improve it. It will give them a much needed chance to expiate their offence of giving such unrepresentative support to the principle of entry. What do we see? The farther we get from the grass roots, the stronger the support for entry into the Community. It is stronger in the board room than on the shop floor. It is stronger in the hereditary Chamber than in the elected Chamber.
Therefore, let my right hon. and learned Friend get up and assure us that he will not take any semantic or technical points on drafting but will set them right on Report, to which he looks forward with a keen and zestful relish, or in the other place. This will be judged by the principle and the principle alone. I say that the principle is clear, that it is an improvement and that it deserves support.

Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) in the latter part of his speech almost seemed to be tempting me to join him in an attack upon another place, which would bring back happy memories of distant battles. However, I do not propose to follow him in that course. It might not suit the new-found respectability with which I have to approach this question.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman also gave a somewhat qualified welcome to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) in moving the Amendment. My welcome is not qualified in any sense whatsoever. I think that it is admirable that my right hon. Friend should have moved his Amendment. He moved it as effectively as we would expect. I very much hope that the whole Committee will accept this modest Amendment, even though some improvements might be made in the wording.
Indeed, I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and many others will join in listening to the debates which we shall be having on the Bill at some later time, because if all right hon. and hon. Members listened to the debates which we have been having on the rights of Parliament I believe that the nature of the Bill would be altered, and altered by a union in some degree of those who are in favour of entry into the European Economic Community and those who are opposed. I do not say that in any sense of mockery. That is the fact and it is what some of us have been trying to say. When my right hon. Friend emphasised the reasons why he wished to see an Amendment on these lines, he was fortifying what many hon. Members on this side have been saying since we started these discussions.
Although Amendment No. 3 is modest and would have been superfluous if some of our earlier Amendments had been accepted, it is valuable partly for the reason underlined by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which is the question of timing. It is clear that if we have learned nothing else, we have learned that we must strike at exactly the moment when the Government think it is possible to make any sort of change. If we strike one second too late, they say, "You have passed the time for ever


when such a change could have been made." Such provision as the Government have made for retaining the power of the House of Commons is inadequate and the Amendment would help to keep at least some of our power.
With Amendment No. 3 we are discussing Amendments Nos. 175 and 177. It is not necessarily convenient for us to discuss them together but we must accept these matters when they come from the Chair. The two being discussed with No. 3 were tabled by the Opposition following our earlier debates, the rulings given by the Chair and our discovery that many matters which we wished to have discussed might not be discussed as part of our examination of Clause 1. Amendment No. 177 therefore reads:
Notwithstanding anything contained in subsection (3) hereof where any treaty is required under Article 228 of the European Economic Community Treaty to be considered by the Assembly then it shall be debated by each House of Parliament before such consideration.
Although it is not a drastic Amendment it would ensure that if certain matters are to be discussed at the European Assembly, those matters must also be discussed, at least to some extent, in this assembly.
More important is Amendment No. 175, which has been provoked by the important discussions we had on the Government's proposal to establish an ad hoc committee. We must consider the origin of this suggestion from the Government because the proposed ad hoc committee has undergone a transformation. Some of us remain suspicious about this proposal and the Amendment would ensure that we discussed the way in which this proposed ad hoc committee might operate.
I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to this too, although it is still a matter for debate how we are to consider the operation of the ad hoc committee, and it is still a matter for consideration by the Committee of what the Government have been saying and why they have been making these various proposals—not exactly contradictory proposals—about what the ad hoc committee might be.

Sir Robin Turton: Surely the hon. Gentleman is referring not to the ad hoc

committee, but to the Select Committee. The ad hoc committee will have to decide whether there should be a Select Committee like this or what the procedure would be.

Mr. Foot: The right hon. Gentleman is correct in what he is saying. Our proposal does not refer directly to the ad hoc committee but to the kind of committee which might be—I do not say for certain would be—the outcome of the proposals or discussions of the ad hoc committee.
What the Government have suggested to the House of Commons is that there shall be an ad hoc committee of the House, consisting of Members from different parties and from both Houses, which would discuss the question of what it should recommend to the House of Commons and to the Government about the operation of such a Select Committee as this. That is the kind of terms of reference which the ad hoc committee will have, although the Government's own terms of reference for the ad hoc committee have varied with each reference to it by the Minister. The Amendment is designed to clear up the ambiguities and doubts about what the Government are proposing.
I say in passing that we on this side would think it wrong to have an ad hoc committee of this nature if it were to be composed of Members from both Houses. We think that that is not the right way to do it. We are considering the protections which the House of Commons wishes to establish and we think it would be wrong that this should be settled by a committee which takes into account the position of both Houses, which is a different matter altogether. That is one qualification which we have about the ad hoc committee, although it is not the primary one.
What we are primarily concerned about is the way in which the Government have been using this idea of the ad hoc committee to deal with all the awkward problems that may have arisen in our debates. Indeed, under the Government's recommendations the ad hoc committee would be dealing with the very matters with which we should be dealing under the provisions of our Amendment.
The first reference to this ad hoc committee proposal was made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during


the Second Reading debate. He made the announcement in rather a strange guise. He said:
As I was saying, in addition to the traditional procedures the Government believe that there is a need for the House"—

Mr. Rippon: Mr. Rippon indicated dissent.

Mr. Foot: The right hon. and learned Gentleman shakes his head. What we have been discussing is how he has been doing away with all the traditional procedures. We have been fighting for the retention of these procedures. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has marched into the Lobby about six times in order to do away with traditional procedures. The most important traditional procedure is the Act of Parliament, and about half an hour ago the right hon. and learned Gentleman walked into the Lobby to remove that traditional procedure.
It is rather interesting to recall that on Second Reading the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
As I was saying, in addition to the traditional procedures the Government believe that there is a need for the House to have special arrangements, under which it would be appraised of draft regulations and directives before they go to the Council of Ministers for decision. These arrangements should cover the instruments which will be directly applicable and the non-direct instruments."—[Official Report, 15th February, 1972; Vol 831, c. 275.]
Those are the two kinds of regulations that come from the Community.
The Government's first proposal was that the ad hoc committee should consider how those instruments should be examined by a body to be set up by the House
12.30 a.m.
A little later in the proceedings, when the Government got into difficulty about the treaties and we were discussing the treaties under the Clause, and the Leader of the House raised the point about the Ponsonby Rules and whether they would be interfered with, the right hon. and learned Gentleman eagerly said again that that was another matter for the ad hoc committee, which could look into the question of what powers and rights about the treaties were being taken away from the House of Commons.
Today we were discussing the most important Amendments of all. Amendments for which we believe there is no substitute—those which have demanded

that we should retain the traditional procedure of Acts of Parliament to deal with great matters. The right hon. and learned Gentleman got into complications on that subject. No one could deny the complications or the fact that he was in great difficulties. In some of our previous debates the Leader of the House has said "Please do not ask me too strictly about some of these matters; ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster." The Chancellor of the Duchy has said "Please do not press me too strongly; ask the Solicitor-General."
No one will do that after today because the Solicitor-General has retired hurt and has not been seen for some time. I do not suppose he will return for a few weeks. We shall rely entirely on the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has confessed that without consulting his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General he can never be certain about what he is saying. But now he says that the very question whether Acts of Parliament should be invoked and the circumstances in which they should be invoked should also be referred for consideration to the ad hoc committee.
It is difficult to imagine a more important procedural question—if one can call it such—that the House of Commons could examine than the question of the circumstances in which we are to do away with the normal processes of Acts of Parliament, Acts that should be dealing, as some of us believe, with such questions as monetary union, which may affect the level of employment and the most important matters in the land, matters that affect the coal and steel industries or taxation, the supreme questions of our politics. What we have been considering today is whether it is proper that on matters affecting such major questions as that, we should sweep away the whole business of having such extraordinary obstacles as Acts of Parliament to get through.
The Government got into a great muddle because the Solicitor-General, with his back against the wall a few days ago, said that he understood the case for Acts of Parliament and that there must be circumstances in which we should be able to insist that we have them, even in dealing with some of the propositions that come from the Community. But the Chancellor of the Duchy


of Lancaster saw the difficulties about that, because he knew that that would be a very difficult thing to marry with what he had said before—not that consistency is his primary virtue, as we have noticed. But he realised the difficulties and was not prepared to say "We are not proposing even to consider the idea of incorporating the proposals by insisting upon Acts of Parliament in the Bill." So he said that we should turn to the ad hoc committee.
At the end of discussions on such major matters as this, dealing with proposals for removing, in great matters, the major protection that the House of Commons has—that major matters affecting the people shall be dealt with only by Acts of Parliament—when the Government are proposing to reduce the range in which the Acts can operate on a scale never conceived in British history, and when a Minister is up against the ropes on the subject, it is pathetic when he to the ad hoc committee I thought of a few days ago", an ad hoc committee says "Perhaps we shall refer the matter which was not supposed originally to have anything to do with Acts of Parliament.
It was never proposed originally that the ad hoc committee should deal with the questions of when we would be able to use the weapon of an Act of Parliament to deal with Community legislation. It was put forward originally to examine how and when we would be able to examine regulations and directives. That is a quite different matter. It was that we should be able to examine treaties which, although not totally different, are of a different character from the matter we were debating this evening.
If the Government's proposal for an ad hoc committee to deal with all this vast range of matters is to be accepted, the committee will deal with dozens of the matters we are supposed to be discussing on the Bill. According to the Government the ad hoc committee can deal with huge chunks of the Bill. This is said by a Government which, since we started to debate these matters, have introduced the idea of the ad hoc committee and which all along have been arguing that everyone knows the procedures that are required to take us into Europe. They have argued that everyone knows how it is to be done, all the

procedures, the pitfalls and the set-backs. When some of us said that things would be different when we came up against the Bill, and that when faced with reality the House of Commons would begin to think differently, the Government denied it. They brushed us aside as people who did not understand these matters.
Every time the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has had to resort to saying that a certain matter must be referred to the ad hoc committee, he has condemned his behaviour on the Bill. All these matters should be dealt with in the Bill itself. Our Amendment only ensures that we should debate the matter now. If it is accepted by the Government it would need to be the subject of detailed examination on Report.
Ours is not a derisory case or something which should be scorned. It is that it is not appropriate to deal with major matters of this kind by pushing them off to a committee which may only be able to report after the Bill becomes law. Once the Bill leaves the House of Commons our protections will have gone and we must see that they are written in now. I invite hon. Members, irrespective of party, to recognise that the Bill represents one of the most serious occasions in the history of the House of Commons. If we do not insist on protecting in the Bill the rights of Parliament and the rights of the people, the responsibility will be ours for betraying the institutions of this country.
Do not let us forget that it is the history of Parliament which gives its distinctive strand to the history of the British people. It is the history of Parliament and the relationship between Parliament and the people which runs throughout our history more than that of any other people, and we are debating whether we have the determination, courage, intelligence, persistence and stamina to insist on our rights in the Bill.

Mr. Rippon: The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot) has made an impassioned repetition of the case he has presented to the Committee throughout our proceedings. He believes in that case, but is wrong to mislead the country into believing that if the Bill is passed all the defences are down and all parliamentary rights have been undermined. One thing is certain, that the ultimate sovereignty of Parliament in these matters


is preserved, and that Governments and Ministers remain responsible to the House for what they do not only in relation to national legislation but in relation to their actions when we are members of the Community.
But I will deal first with the relatively narrow point raised by Amendment No. 3. It would require the draft of an Order in Council specifying a treaty as being within the definition of the Communities' treaties to be approved by Parliament before the treaty is entered into. Of course—and I think my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) made this clear—the Clause as it stands ensures that the affirmative Resolutions are obtained before a treaty is binding upon us. I think he would have liked to see the the words "before signature", but we debated on 20th January the difficulties that would arise if we were tempted to legislate for treaties to be approved before signature. That would not be in accordance with our normal constitutional practice and would be pointless in the absence of an agreed text. I say "in accordance with our normal constitutional practice" because there is a limited class of treaties where the treaty obligation arises out of resolutions passed in conference, and therefore the terms of the treaty are known in advance, but normally the text of treaties is not known or discussed before signature.
As it is, the Clause makes it perfectly clear that the affirmative Resolutions must be obtained before the treaty is binding on us. That, I hope, goes at least some way towards meeting an anxiety expressed by the hon. Members who have supported the Amendment. What needs to be understood by the Committee is that the Bill as it stands preserves the present constitutional practice. That is not the sort of deduction readily drawn from the speech of the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale. But the Bill preserves the present constitutional practice whereby, although it is the prerogative of the Crown to enter into treaties, changes in the law of the United Kingdom can be made only with the authority of Parliament.

Mr. R. T. Paget: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that the terms of the treaty are known before signature. Does he really mean that?

Mr. Rippon: I am sorry if I misled the hon. and learned Gentleman in any way. It would have been more accurate to say that the text of the treaty is not normally known before signature. That is what we discussed on 20th January. There is a class of treaties which arise out of conference resolutions where the terms and the text are known before signature, but normally the prerogative of the Crown is exercised by the signature of the treaty, and thereafter certain parliamentary procedures arise between signature and ratification.
In this case we should be concerned with the necessity to bring forward the affirmative Resolutions, so the treaty would not be binding upon us until the procedure had been carried out. I was explaining, obviously to the surprise of some right hon. and hon. Gentlemen, that what is in the Bill is not the savage departure from our constitutional practice that those who listened to the hon. Mem- for Ebbw Vale might have thought.
12.45 a.m.
Now I think I should turn to Amendments Nos. 175 and 177, which are also concerned with the stage before action is taken under subsection (3). The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale dealt with the object of these Amendments. Plainly, the object is to write into the Bill the sort of procedural arrangements which might come out of the ad hoc committee. The hon. Member had something to say about the proposed ad hoc committee. There must be a clear distinction made between legislative provisions with legal consequences, which are for the Bill, and Parliament's internal procedures, which may be for the ad hoc committee initially but are later for standing orders and resolutions. The two should be kept separate. Certainly the Government have not claimed that the provisions in the Bill are substantially dependent upon the ad hoc committee's considerations. The Government justify the provisions in the Bill on their merits and procedural arrangements of the kind proposed are not suitable for statutory enactment.
I must deal briefly with the misunderstandings, not to say misrepresentations which have arisen out of the proposal for an ad hoc committee. I think I am entitled to point out that we are still awaiting the comments of the Opposition on the proposals which were


conveyed to them through the usual channels about three weeks ago. We have been criticised for referring to the ad hoc committee, which has not yet been set up, but the fact that it has not been set up is not because of any delay on the part of the Government. I do not criticise the Opposition in any way on this. They want to know the terms of reference. What I said on Second Reading was not intended to be the final word on the matter. These things should be discussed, but while they are being considered I should have thought that the hon. Member could have avoided the rather captious sniping he has enjoyed so much.
It is important that there should be a distinction between what goes into legislation and what is for procedural arrangements—a distinction between what is in the Bill and what is for the ad hoc committee. That distinction goes to the root of the Government's objections to this Amendment because it proposes to embody in legislation what is not suitable for legislation. I hope that the Committee will accept that that is so. It would not be in the interests of Parliament itself to depart from accepted arrangements for determining parliamentary procedure and to make such procedural provisions in statutes which themselves could be amended by a Bill. I should have thought that many hon. and right hon. Members on either side of the Committee would accept that parliamentary procedures need to be much more flexible, especially in the developing situation after we become members of the Community.
I should hope that all these matters will be gone into by the ad hoc committee and nothing that I say tonight should be taken as commenting in any way on the substance of the proposals in the Amendment. Certainly the ad hoc committee will want to look at what is practical and appropriate in this area, but it would not be suitable for enactment. I hope that the Amendments will not be proceeded with.

Mr. Foot: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman seriously suggesting that the question of which matters should properly be dealt with by Act of Parliament and which should not should

be referred to an ad hoc committee of this kind?

Mr. Rippon: I said that certain matters are suitable to be dealt with by Act of Parliament and other matters of procedure are suitable for the ad hoc committee, and we should draw the distinction clearly. The Amendments seek to put into statutory form what we think should be dealt with by procedure. The procedure should be more flexible than the hon. Gentleman suggests, because I am sure that he would not wish to tie future Parliaments in their method of handling these matters.

Mr. R. T. Paget: Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, will he answer one other question? He has said that the terms of agreements are unknown when the agreements are signed. Does he mean by that that we sign blank cheques for the Community to fill in and then expect the House of Commons to accept those blank cheques as part of our law?

Mr. Rippon: I am sorry if I have misled the hon. and learned Gentleman. The terms are not publicly known Obviously they are known to the people who are signing the treaty. We discussed this matter on 20th January and explained the circumstances in which the Crown in exercise of its Prerogative signed a treaty which was subsequently published. There was a good deal of criticism of the Government for proposing to sign the treaty before it had been published and considered by Parliament, but I think the House was satisfied that the proper procedure was for the treaty to be signed, the text subsequently made available and the process of ratification gone through in the normal constitutional way. That is what we are doing now and we are suggesting that we should follow our normal constitutional procedures.

Mr. S. C. Silkin: Mr. S. C. Silkin rose—

The Temporary Chairman: I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman has sat down. Mr. Deakins.

Mr. Silkin: On a point of order. I understood the right hon. and learned Gentleman to indicate by nodding that he was giving way to me.

The Temporary Chairman: That is not my impression. The hon. and learned Gentleman may speak if he wishes to.

Mr. Deakins: I merely want to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, before he sits down, one question which must be worrying several members of the Committee, namely, the function of the ad hoc committee in relation to the procedure in subsection (3)B. In the course of the last five minutes the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said two contradictory things. He first implied that the ad hoc committee would be able to consider whether or not a particular Community treaty warranted legislation or could go through under the procedure of the second part of subsection (3). A moment later he took that back and seemed to imply that the task of deciding whether or not legislation was appropriate was a matter for the Government of the day. Those views cannot both be right. Before the debate closes will the right hon. and learned Gentleman say which is the Government's view?

Mr. Powell: Without unduly delaying the Committee if it desires to be gone, I should like to second the welcome which my right hon. and learned Friend extended to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell), and to do so not only just as warmly but if anything more seriously than did my right hon. and learned Friend.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: That would be difficult.

Mr. Powell: There was a certain avuncular jocularity about my right hon. and learned Friend's welcome which I shall not be able to equal—

Mr. S. C. Silkin: If the right hon. Gentleman wishes seriously to welcome my right hon. Friend, will he refer to him as the right hon. Gentleman?

Mr. Powell: I apologise to my fellow Privy Councillor; I am sorry that I addressed him incorrectly. I think the right hon. Gentleman's speech marked a phase in these debates and that what he said was a portent for the future which my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench would do well to mark, because he struck a note which is going to reverberate more and more loudly through these debates

until it is listened to and produces its effect.
One thing in particular the right hon. Gentleman said which I think was remarkably profound. He referred to the possible development of the Community as an association of sovereign States and expressed the view that as far as he was concerned that was still an open question. He also declared that for him and for many of his hon. Friends who share his general view of the Community, parliamentary control over the Executive was a matter of paramount importance. I believe we do wrong if we simply divide hon. Members into pro-Marketeers and anti-Marketeers—for Europe, against Europe; those who are alleged to want to turn their backs upon Europe, and those who are alleged to want to rush into the embrace of some European community.
It is not so, even now; and as these debates continue, such a caricature will become even more ludicrous. There is far more similarity, there are far more points of contact, between the pro-Marketeers and the anti-Marketeers, as they are commonly called, than would be imagined from the popular, popularised descriptions of our debates. There is something of a European even in those who are most stoutly opposed to the Bill; and even amongst those who are most European in the technical sense there is a potential sympathy—which will become an overt sympathy—for the objectives most at the heart of those who are opposing it.
I do not believe that, as the weeks and the months go by, it will prove that there is no way out for this House or for the Government from the impasse in which we appear at present to find ourselves; and I believe that Amendments like this one point the way along which that—I will not use the word "reconciliation"—I will say "escape" is eventually going to be found. In a matter of this kind, which all hon. Members recognise to be of profound historical importance, it is not the way of this House that one point of view should overbear and crush the other point of view, nor are we really contending for that kind of a prize in these debates.
I have not a great deal of sympathy, I must admit, although I understand their purpose, with the two subsidiary


Amendments, No. 177 and No. 175. My lack of sympathy arises from the fact that I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend in saying that the procedure of the House and legislation are distinct matters, and that I do not believe, although I know these Amendments were drafted with a dialectical objective, that we can seriously legislate for when and what each House of Parliament shall debate—I do not believe that is a subject for legislation—nor do I believe legislation ought to lay down the function of Select Committees of this House or both Houses.
1.0 a.m.
It was the right hon. Member for Birkenhead who went to the heart of the matter in his demand that before the Government commit themselves, whatever this House will do shall first be done. This means that we are recognising the treaties, instruments, etc. in the context of a European Community as different things from the treaties to which the books on international law, the Ponsonby rule and all the rest refer. Indeed they are. It is the beginning of wisdom to realise that one cannot treat these instruments, these successive planned advances towards the political, economic and monetary union of Western Europe, as treaties. They are political matters in which this House and Parliament and public opinion must be involved in a way that in regard to an ordinary treaty, however important, it has not been customary or necessary that it should be involved.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead, whatever may be the difficulties in his Amendment, has expressed the heart of the matter, namely that unless this House and Parliament keep control of the Executive before the Executive commits itself in the development of the Community and in the management of the Community's affairs, we shall have sacrificed that parliamentary control over the Executive which is the object that links together those of us who appear to be most divided.
I shall vote tonight in support of the right hon. Gentleman; and I shall do so believing that this Amendment is the first sign and glimmering of an understanding which will gradually grow as these proceedings continue and which will even-

tually banish the grotesque alternative, with which so many of us seem now to find ourselves faced, between the loss of what we had held dear in the relations of this country with Europe and the loss of the sovereignty and authority of this House to which we are equally devoted.

Mr. Molloy: In earlier discussions I pointed out that even those who were in favour of Britain's entry into the Common Market would, having examined what was involved in this Bill, find themselves not merely in disagreement with the Bill but having to make a dramatic reappraisal of their position and to examine the doubts which they may have held for a number of years. This fact was demonstrated in this debate, and it may be further demonstrated in future. This is a very good thing and I applaud it.
I found most disturbing the irresponsible reply of the Chancellor of the Duchy to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot). When it suited him the right hon. and learned Gentleman was saying that the ad hoc committee was merely a small matter and would deal only with things which were not of real importance. Then a little later, again when it suited him, he elevated the ad hoc committee to a body of dramatic importance to which one could entrust future legislation to be dealt with in the House. This point which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has treated so lightly this evening—the effects of what will happen, the status of the ad hoc committee—is a matter of vital importance and we should discuss it.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman has a responsibility, when he replies to the important points from this side of the Committee or the other, to ensure that the essence of his reply is based on what has been said, not on making cheap remarks about the manner in which they have been said. He has said, and we all agree, that this is a fundamental issue and one of the greatest, perhaps, that we have discussed.
If that is so, the right hon and learned Gentleman should treat those points in a much more serious manner, like that in which they are presented. They are presented in a manner to command respect,


and that is the responsibility of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in answering the serious arguments put from all parts of the Committee.

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 168, Noes 185.

Division No. 91.]
AYES
[1.06 a.m.


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Ogden, Eric


Armstrong Ernest
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
O' Halloran, Michael


Atkinson, Norman
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
O'Malley, Brian


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Hamling, William
Orme, Stanley


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Hardy, Peter
Oswald, Thomas


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Paget, R. T.


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Heffer, Eric S.
Palmer, Arthur


Bidwell, Sydney
Huckfield, Leslie
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)


Biffen, John
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Pavitt, Laurie


Bishop, E. S.
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Hunter, Adam
Pendry, Tom


Booth, Albert
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Pentland, Norman


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Janner, Greville
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Buchan, Norman
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Prescott, John


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechtord)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Cant, R. B.
John, Brynmor
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br 'c' n &amp; R' dnor)


Carmichael, Neil
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Roper, John


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Rose, Paul B.


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Russell, Sir Ronald


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Judd, Frank
Sandelson, Neville


Cohen, Stanley
Kaufman, Gerald
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Coleman, Donald
Kerr, Russell
Short, Mrs. Renée (Whampton, N. E.)


Concannon, J. D.
Kinnock, Neil
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Conlan, Bernard
Lambie, David
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Lamond, James
Sillars, James


Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Leadbitter, Ted
Skinner, Dennis


Dalyell, Tam
Lestor, Miss Joan
Small, William


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Spearing, Nigel


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Spriggs, Leslie


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Lomas, Kenneth
Stainton, Keith


Davis, Terry, Bromsgrove)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Stallard, A. W.


Deakins, Eric
McCartney, Hugh
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Dempsey, James
McElhone, Frank
Strang, Gavin


Dormand, J. D.
McGuire, Michael
Swain, Thomas


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Mackie, John
Taverne, Dick


Duffy, A. E. P.
Maclennan, Robert
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Eadie, Alex
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Tinn, James


Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Tuck, Raphael


Ellis, Tom
Marks, Kenneth
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin


English, Michael
Marquand, David
Urwin, T. W.


Evans, Fred
Marsden, F.
Varley, Eric G.


Ewing, Harry
Marten, Neil
Wainwright, Edwin


Farr, John
Meacher, Michael
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Fell, Anthony
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Mendelson, John
Watkins, David


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Millan, Bruce
Wellbeloved, James


Foley, Maurice
Moate, Roger
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Foot, Michael
Molloy, William
Whithead, Phillip


Ford, Ben
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Whitlock, William


Forrester, John
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Freeson, Reginald
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Gilbert, Dr. John
Moyle, Roland
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick



Grant, George (Morpeth)
Murray, Ronald King
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Oakes, Gordon
Mr. Joseph Harper and Mr. John Holding.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Bray Ronald
Cooke, Robert


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Cooper, A. E.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Corfield, R. Hn. Frederick


Astor, John
Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Costain, A. P.


Atkins, Humphrey
Bryan, Paul
Critchley, Julian


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Buck, Antony
Crouch, David


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Carlisle, Mark
Curran, Charles


Benyon, W.
Channon, Paul
Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Chapman, Sydney
d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry


Biggs-Davison John
Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Churchill, W. S.
Dodds-Parker, Douglas


Boscawen, Robert
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Eden, Sir John


Bossom, Sir Clive
Clegg, Walter
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)


Bowden, Andrew
Cockeram, Eric
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)




Emery, Peter
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Rees, Peter (Dover)


Eyre, Reginald
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Kinsey, J. R.
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Fidler, Michael
Kirk, Peter
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Knox, David
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Lane, David
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)


Fortescue, Tim
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Fox, Marcus
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Rost, Peter


Gibson-Watt, David
Le Marchant, Spencer
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Sharples, Richard


Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Lloyd, Ian (P 'tsm' th, Langstone)
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Longden, Gilbert
Shelton, William (Clapham)


Goodhart, Philip
MacArthur, Ian
Simeons, Charles


Goodhew, Victor
McCrindle, R. A.
Skeet, T. H. H.


Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
McLaren, Martin
Smith, Dudley (W' wick &amp; L' mington)


Gray, Hamish
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Speed, Keith


Green, Alan
McMaster, Stanley
Spence, John


Grieve, Percy
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)
Sproat, Iain


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
McNair-Wilson, Michael
Stanbrook, Ivor


Grylls, Michael
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)


Gummer, Selwyn
Madel, David
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)


Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Mather, Carol
Stokes, John


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Maude, Angus
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Tebbit, Norman


Hannam, John (Exeter)
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)


Harrison, Co. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Haselhurst, Alan
Miscampbell, Norman
Tiley, John


Havers, Michael
Mitchell, Lt.-Col. C.(Aberdeenshire, W)
Trafford, Dr. Anthony


Hawkins, Paul
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Trew, Peter


Hay, John
Money, Ernle
Tugendhat, Christopher


Heseltine, Michael
Monks, Mrs. Connie
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Hicks, Robert
Monro, Hector
Waddington, David


Higgins, Terence L.
Montgomery, Fergus
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Ward, Dame Irene


Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.
Warren, Kenneth


Holland, Philip
Neave, Airey
Weatherill, Bernard


Hordern, Peter
Noble, Rt. Hon. Michael
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Hornby, Richard
Normanton, Tom
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Oppenheim, Mrs. Sally
Wiggin, Jerry


Howell, David (Guildford)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Wilkinson, John


Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Osborn, John
Winterton, Nicholas


Hunt, John
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


James, David
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Jessel, Toby
Parkinson, Cecil
Woodnutt, Mark


Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Younger, Hn. George


Jopling, Michael
Proudfoot, Wilfred



Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Kaberry, Sir Donald
Quennell, Miss J. M.
Mr. Oscar Murton and Mr. Hugh Rossi.


Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine
Raison, Timothy

Question accordingly negatived.

Amendment proposed: No. 175, in page 2, line 20, at end insert:

(4) Any Community treaty within the meaning of this section, other than the pre-accession and accession treaties, shall be referred in draft or immediately after publication to a Select Committee of the House of Commons on Community Treaties for scrutiny and report, and until such report has been considered and

approved by Parliament, the procedure provided in subsection (3) above shall not be followed.—[Mr. Michael Foot.]

Question put, That the Amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 158, Noes 189.

Division No. 92.]
AYES
[1.16 a.m.


Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Cant, R. B.
Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)


Armstrong, Ernest
Carmichael, Neil
Deakins, Eric


Atkinson, Norman
Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Dempsey, James


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Dormand, J. D.


Barnett, Joel (Heywood and Royton)
Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Duffy, A. E. P.


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Cohen, Stanley
Eadle, Alex


Bidwell, Sydney
Coleman, Donald
Edwards, William (Merioneth)


Biffen, John
Concannon, J. D.
Ellis, Tom


Bishop, E. S.
Conlan, Bernard
English, Michael


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Evans, Fred


Booth, Albert
Cunningham, Dr. J. A. (Whitehaven)
Ewing, Henry


Brown, Hugh D. (G' gow, Provan)
Dalyell, Tam
Fietcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)


Buchan, Norman
Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)


Buchanan, Richard (G' gow, Sp' burn)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Foley, Maurice


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Foot, Michael




Ford, Ben
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Roderick, Caerwyn E. (Br 'c' n &amp; R dnor)


Forrester, John
McCartney, Hugh
Roper, John


Freeson, Reginald
McElhone, Frank
Rose, Paul B.


Gilbert, Dr. John
McGuire, Michael
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Ginsburg, David (Dewsbury)
Mackie, John
Sandelson, Neville


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Maclennan, Robert
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W' hampton, N. E.)


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Marks, Kenneth
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Marquand, David
Sillars, James


Hamling, William
Marsden, F.
Skinner, Dennis


Hardy, Peter
Meacher, Michael
Small, William


Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Spearing, Nigel


Heffer, Eric S.
Mendelson, John
Spriggs, Leslie


Huckfield, Leslie
Millan, Bruce
Stallard, A. W.


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Molloy, William
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Strang, Gavin


Hunter, Adam
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Swain, Thomas


Janner, Greville
Morris, Rt. Hn. John (Aberavon)
Taverne, Dick


Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Moyle, Roland
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Tinn, James


Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechtord)
Murray, Ronald King
Tuck, Raphael


John, Brynmor
Oakes, Gordon
Urwin, T. W.


Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Ogden, Eric
Varley, Eric G.


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
O'Halloran, Michael
Wainwright, Edwin


Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
O'Malley, Brian
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Orme, Stanley
Watkins, David


Judd, Frank
Oswald, Thomas
Wellbeloved, James


Kaufman, Gerald
Paget, R. T.
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Kerr, Russell
Palmer, Arthur
Whitehead, Phillip


Kinnock, Neil
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange)
Whitlock, William


Lambie, David
Pavitt, Laurie
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Lamond, James
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Leadbitter, Ted
Pendry, Tom
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Lestor, Miss Joan
Pentland, Norman



Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Prescott, John
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)
Mr. Joseph Harper and


Lomas, Kenneth
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Mr. John Golding.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Hunt, John


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Emery, Peter
James, David


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Eyre, Reginald
Jessel, Toby


Astor, John
Farr, John
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)


Atkins, Humphrey
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Jopling, Michael


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Fidler, Michael
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Kaberry, Sir Donald


Benyon, W.
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs. Elaine


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Fortescue, Tim
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)


Biggs-Davison, John
Fox, Marcus
King, Tom (Bridgwater)


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Gibson-Watt, David
Kinsey, A. R.


Boscawen, Robert
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Kirk, Peter


Bossom, Sir Clive
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Knox, David


Bowden, Andrew
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Lane, David


Bray, Ronald
Goodhart, Philip
Langford-Holt, Sir John


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Goodhew, Victor
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Le Marchant, Spencer


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Gray, Hamish
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Bryan, Paul
Green, Alan
Lloyd, Ian (P 'tsm' th, Langstone)


Buck, Antony
Grieve, Percy
Longden, Sir Gilbert


Carlisle, Mark
Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
MacArthur, Ian


Channon, Paul
Grylls, Michael
McCrindle, R. A.


Chapman, Sydney
Gummer, Selwyn
McLaren, Martin


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Churchill, W. S.
Hall, John (Wycombe)
McMaster, Stanley


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Maurice (Farnham)


Clegg, Walter
Hannam, John (Exeter)
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Cockeram, Eric
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (NewForest)


Cooke, Robert
Haselhurst, Alan
Madel, David


Cooper, A. E.
Havers, Michael
Mather, Carol


Corfield, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Hawkins, Paul
Maude, Angus


Costain, A. P.
Hay, John
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Critchley, Julian
Heseltine, Michael
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Crouch, David
Hicks, Robert
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Curran, Charles
Higgins, Terence L.
Miscampbell, Norman


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Mitchell, Lt-Col. C. (Aberdeenshire. W)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
Holland, Philip
Money, Ernle


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Hordern, Peter
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Dykes, Hugh
Hornby, Richard
Monro, Hector


Eden, Sir John
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Montgomery, Fergus


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Howell, David (Guildford)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)



Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.




Neave, Airey







Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
St. John-Stevas, Norman
Trew, Peter


Normanton, Tom
Sharples, Richard
Tugendhat, Christopher


Oppenheim, Mrs Sally
Shaw, Michael (Sc 'b' gh &amp; Whitby)
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Shelton, William (Clapham)
Waddington, David


Osborn, John
Simeons, Charles
Walder, David (Clitheroe)


Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)
Skeet, T. H. H.
Ward, Dame Irene


Page, Graham (Crosby)
Smith, Dudley (W 'wick &amp; L' mington)
Warren, Kenneth


Parkinson, Cecil
Speed, Keith
Weatherill, Bernard


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Spence, John
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Proudfool, Wilfred
Sproat, Iain
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis
Stainton, Keith
Wiggin, Jerry


Quennell, Miss J. M.
Stanbrook, Ivor
Wilkinson, John


Raison, Timothy
Stewart-Smith, Geoffrey (Belper)
Winterton, Nicholas


Rees, Peter (Dover)
Stodart, Anthony (Edinburgh, W.)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David
Stokes, John
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Woodnutt, Mark


Ridley, Hn. Nicholas
Tebbit, Norman
Younger, Hn. George


Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)



Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N.)
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
TEELERS FOR THE NOES:


Roberts, Wyn (Conway)
Tilney, John
Mr. Oscar Murton and Mr. Hugh Rossi.


Rost, Peter
Trafford, Dr. Anthony



Russell, Sir Ronald

Question accordingly negatived.

To report Progress and ask leave to sit again.—[Mr. Rippon.]

Committee report Progress; to sit again this day.

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Humphrey Atkins.]

Orders of the Day — TRENT RIVER AUTHORITY (WATER SUPPLY)

1.25 a.m.

Mr. William Whitlock: Almost anyone who takes the slightest interest in current affairs will have heard that we face some quite acute water supply problems, but one often hears people say that they find this difficult to understand in a country which seems to have so much rain. It is, however, a surprising fact that England and Wales have one of the lowest residual rainfalls per head of population in Western Europe. Residual rainfall, as the Minister knows, is the rainfall which is usable after evaporation and transpiration and in our small crowded island, so densely populated and so heavily industrialised, we are having difficulty in making our rainfall go around, as it were. It is not that we are short of water but rather that we are short of the means of storing it and regulating its use; and of course, while the bulk of the rainfall is in the west of the country, the bulk of the population is in the eastern side and this in itself presents problems.
As soon as one mentions the need to store water, some conservationists will, inevitably, point to desalination plants as the answer to our water problems, but since these plants must be on the coast the cost of conveying water inland from them is very high indeed. In any case, the works associated with them are also of a character offensive to the preservationists. Estuarial barrages are also mentioned as an alternative to new inland means of storage of water but barrages, it seems to me, are way ahead, and a six years' feasability study, for instance, has yet to be carried out on the Wash barrage scheme. It is true that other barrage schemes may be nearer implementation, but even with these coastal schemes of storage of water, and with improved methods of the re-use of water which we must increasingly adopt, more inland reservoirs must be built—not, of course, the huge impounding reservoirs of the past but those of the type by means of which the flows of rivers are regulated.
It is estimated that in the next 30 years the total land "take" which will be necessary for reservoirs will be no more than the amount of agricultural land taken for urban use in just one year. By the year 2000 no more than 0·24 per cent. of the total land surface area of England and Wales will be used for reservoirs, and that is surely a small amount of land for an essential of life.
In the area of the Trent River Authority, which has its headquarters in Nottingham, 16 water undertakings make their major demands. Their total demands, at present 360 million gallons per


day, will increase by the end of the century to 870 million gallons per day, a deficiency of 510 million gallons daily. The demands in the western part of the authority's area will continue to be met by water imported from Wales and the River Severn, but there will nevertheless be 50 million gallons per day in 1981, and 272 million gallons per day in 2001, to be met from sources inside the Trent River Authority area.
Deficiencies are most critical in the central part of the area, the water undertakings most concerned being the Staffordshire Potteries Water Board, the North Derbyshire Water Board and the South Derbyshire Water Board. The needs of these and other undertakings must be met from the Rivers Dove and Derwent and this can best be achieved by the construction of a reservoir to regulate and so to augment the natural low flows. This reservoir must be operational by 1979 at the latest. I stress that it is desperately needed.
A number of sites for the reservoir have been considered and those most favoured on technical and other grounds are Brund on the River Manifold in the Dove catchment, Carsington on the Hen more Brook, also in the Dove catchment, and Hassop on the River Derwent. Of these sites, together with others which have been considered, only the Brund site has been fully investigated. To enable a proper comparison to be made a detailed geological survey of the other two favoured sites must be undertaken. Because the landowners concerned have withheld their consent the Trent River Authority has been forced to apply to the Secretary of State for the Environment for compulsory works orders under Section 67 of the Water Resources Act, 1963, to enable it to undertake these investigations. As soon as the investigations are completed a site will be selected for development and it is expected that the Authority will begin to acquire land in 1973–74.
I come now to the problem of compensation to those displaced by a reservoir and the resistance to the building of the reservoir by those who would suffer from the complete inadequacy of present compensation arrangements. Compensation under the current code is generally considered unsatisfactory in many respects; in particular, tenant farmers are likely to suffer considerable

hardship because their basic statutory entitlement is a maximum of six times the annual rent which they pay for the land which is taken. In the case of land such as that taken for reservoir sites the rent paid is often low because of long family associations between tenant and landlord, or because the quality of the land is not good. This results in very low compensation, which is quite inadequate when one remembers that men's livelihoods and homes are being taken from them by the building of reservoirs in this way. An additional hardship is that it is often very difficult to find another farm to rent.
At Brund, one of the sites I have mentioned, a number of tenant farmers would be displaced and undoubtedly severe cases of hardship would result for them. These are not prosperous landed gentlemen but in many cases virtually slaves of the soil. To illustrate this I give briefly the details of one farm at Brund. It has been occupied by the same family for 400 years as tenants. The area of the farm is 99 acres, the present rent is £250 per annum and so the maximum compensation, apart from extras for fixtures, improvements, etc., is £1,500. It is obvious that this is totally inadequate to replace the livelihood of the tenants, in this case two brothers in their fifties who will find it hard to obtain other employment. If the community as a whole is to benefit from the building of a reservoir, as it undoubtedly will, the farmers are part of the whole and should not suffer, as they will under present provisions.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: I have the same problem in my constituency. I hope the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Whitlock) appreciates that some of these tenant farmers cannot even draw unemployment pay, and their situation is very serious.

Mr. Whitlock: That is just another indication of the hardship that follows for tenant farmers who are dispossessed in this way.
The Trent River Authority is all too conscious of the inadequancy of the compensation now available and in the 1970–71 Session of Parliament the authority promoted a Bill containing a Clause which would have enabled it to make discretionary payments in cases of personal hardship to persons displaced from


the land. The Clause was precedented in earlier Private Acts authorising construction of reservoirs. Nevertheless the Department of the Environment opposed the Clause on two grounds. It said it would prejudice the current Government review of compensation and that it was undesirable that one public authority should be able to pay more in compensation than others. The Clause was allowed by the House on the condition that it was restricted to land acquired for reservoirs but it was dissallowed by the Lord Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords.
One of the reasons mentioned by the Lord Chairman of Committees in disallowing the Clause was that the authority already had a general power to pay extra compensation under Section 22 of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1963. In spite of that statement by the Lord Chairman of Committees on the Third Reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, it was revealed that current Government policy prevented payments from capital under Section 22 except where recipients would otherwise receive no compensation. The authority is left in the situation, therefore, that it knows that Section 22 is available in theory for use but that the Government have indicated that it should be used only in certain restricted circumstances which do not apply in the building of the much-needed reservoir to which I have referred.
This is an urgent matter, and since a review of compensation has been in hand for several years it is time the Government made an announcement. Can the Minister say when a White Paper on compensation will be published? Will it provide for improved compensation for tenant farmers? When is the necessary legislation likely to come before the House? What is the justification of the Government in restricting the operation of Section 22 of the 1963 Act when it might well be used to improve the compensation for tenant farmers, pending amendment of the compensation code? I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to give some information on these points.

1.47 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): I am glad that the hon. Member for Notting-

ham, North (Mr. Whitlock) began with a review of the general water situation of the country. He is a vice-president of the Association of River Authorities and like him I have a special fascination and deep concern for the water industry and all that goes with it. Our water supply is by no means assured for the future and it will require large sums of investment and considerable organisation and skill to make certain that there is sufficient water to drink and sufficient water for industry in the generations to come. That is why I should say in general at the outset that the Government are now committed to a national water strategy which has four main objectives.
The first objective is to secure an ample supply of water for people, industry and farming. This will mean massive investment if we are to meet the growing demand, which is expected to double before the end of the century. The second object of this policy is to provide adequate sewerage and sewage disposal arrangements to meet the rising demands from new housing and new industrial and agricultural developments. This, too, will be very expensive. Thirdly, we must clean up our rivers, partly because I suspect we shall need to take more water from them for drinking but also because we cannot accept polluted rivers as part of a twentieth-century environment. In this respect the river pollution survey published at the end of 1971 shows that we are making good progress.
The mileage of grossly polluted rivers has fallen by about 25 per cent. since the 1958 survey, but clearly we must and can do better. We must set ourselves a target of achieving an improvement in the quality of our rivers of the same order of magnitude as the improvement in our city air which has followed the Clean Air Act.
The fourth dimension of this national water strategy is to open up all our water supplies—the rivers, canals and inland waters of all kinds—for recreation, amenity and conservation. In this the contributions from all sides at the Conference on the Better Uses of Water Space which I held on 28th February will be of considerable help.
To achieve those objectives we need new machinery and more money. The sort of money involved was presaged by my right hon. Friend's announcement


that our total investment in the water and sewerage services would be about £1,400 million over the next five or six years. The new machinery was envisaged in the Government's proposals for the reorganisation of water and sewerage services last December. These will involve the formation of 10 all-purpose regional water authorities, one of which will have responsibility for the Trent and Severn basins. All these regional authorities will be responsible for all aspects of the hydrological cycle, from the raindrop not merely to the drinking glass but all the way to the estuary. They will be able to control all their rivers and other inland waterways on an integrated basis.
I turn to the particular problems in the area of the Trent River Authority. The hon. Gentleman referred first to the growing water demand of his area. He will be well versed in this from the many excellent publications of the Trent River Authority, including the "Water Development Plan" and "Water Resources—A Preliminary Study" and the Water Resources Board's report on "Water Resources in Wales and the Midlands." The Water Resources Board's recommendations agree broadly with the river authority's view of the situation. The board felt that the needs of the West Midlands could best be met from outside its area, from or through the Severn. This illustrates why we have proposed a regional water authority covering both the Trent and the Severn.
A strategic source of water is also required urgently for the North Midlands. This could best be found, in the board's view, within the Trent River Authority's own area by regulation of the Rivers Dove and Derwent from new reservoirs in the Peak District. It mentioned, as the hon. Gentleman did tonight, three potential sites, of which one, at Brund, on the Manifold, a Dove tributary, has already been successfully proved. Applications for orders authorising the investigation of the other two sites at Carsington, on the Hen more Brook, and at Hassop are at present before the Secretary of State, but these proposals, as the hon. Member knows, met with strong opposition and the report of the local inquiry held into the objections is now under consideration. I am sure the hon. Member will appreciate that I cannot anticipate my right hon. Friend's de-

cision on these applications, but I assure him that a decision will be made as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, the Trent Research Programme is evaluating various possible ways of using the Trent itself and the results may throw light on the question of whether the river can be used for potable water supplies as a natural water pipe instead of a drain and a sewer. We cannot reach firm conclusions until all these results are available but it is interesting to note that the Water Resources Board assume that for the purpose of Wales and the Midlands the Trent would not be a source for public water supply in the foreseeable future. It could emerge that known treatment methods do not suffice to render water as polluted as the Trent really safe for potable supplies. We await the results with great interest.
At the same time my Department is discussing with the river and sewerage authorities capital expenditure on sewage treatment over the next few years. These discussions will be extended to works on water resources so that comprehensive programmes can be put in hand. The sewerage authorities are of course being encouraged to play their full part in this.
The principal treatment authority is the Upper Tame Main Drainage Authority which has a substantial programme in hand for building new treatment works or improving existing ones. The two authorities and my Department, after some earlier difficulties, are now in accord on the broad objectives and phasing of this programme.
Turning to compensation, which was the main theme of the latter part of the hon. Member's speech, I shall look with considerable interest at the example he gave of the two brothers. He referred to the Clause in the Trent River Authority's 1971 Bill which was disallowed in Committee. That Clause would have enabled payments to be made over and above those to which people displaced would normally be entitled under the compensation code. My Department opposed this for two reasons. First, if extra payments are thought to be right they should be available over the country as a whole, not just to people in one part. Secondly, we were engaged in a review of the compensation code which included the position of tenant farmers and it would be


undesirable to make any partial changes before the outcome of the review was known.
We have been pushing ahead with the review as fast as the complexity of the subject allows and my right hon. Friend has promised a White Paper as a prelude to legislation as soon as decisions have been made. Meanwhile, I assure the hon. Member that the particular problems of farmers have been very much in our minds and their representations are receiving most careful consideration. I fully recognise the difficulties which arise for landowners and tenants in areas where compulsory acquisition is necessary. Where land is acquired by the Government, for example, for road schemes, the Government do all they can to help within the existing law.
The construction of reservoirs is a matter not for the Government but for the river or water authorities. It is not for the Government to tell them as independent statutory undertakers how to run their affairs, but there is no doubt that difficulties arise, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) has recently raised a case with me. While I recognise both the independence and the difficulties of the river authorities, I hope that they in turn will recognise the importance of carrying schemes through as smoothly as possible once they have been approved. Every argument about compensation which hon. Members feel they must raise with me only makes the next reservoir case the more difficult. This does no good to anyone because it is inevitable that more reservoirs will be needed.
The hon. Gentleman has suggested that Section 22 of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1963, should be used to increase compensation payments to farmers pending the outcome of my right hon. Friend's review. As is clear from the debate which took place when that Section was introduced, it was designed to put farmers on the same footing as business tenants who received payments under discretionary powers under the Land Compensation Act, 1961. Section 22 was used briefly to make payments to tenant farmers on the basis of the special provisions in the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1968, in advance of enactment, but it is now used

by Government Departments only to make payments to those who have no statutory entitlement, for example licensees and 364-day tenants.
The Government's policy in respect of discretionary powers such as Section 22 is that they should be used only to provide compensation where no statutory entitlement exists. River authorities are independent of the central Government, so that how they use the discretionary powers of Section 22 is a matter entirely for them.
I think the House as a whole would agree that the taking of land for reservoirs is always and always will be a contentious subject involving inevitable conflicts of interest often between one service to the public, namely water supply, and another service, food production. I have this problem in my constituency and many hon. Members will know how difficult it can be.
The Government are fully conscious of the social costs involved in the construction of storage and regulating reservoirs and we are fully investigating all realistic alternatives. We are looking at estuarial storage behind barrages. The Water Resources Board has just published a report on its feasibility study of a Morecambe Bay barrage. A similar study is being undertaken of storage reservoirs in the Wash and we are also looking at the Dee.
Technology, too, may offer some future comfort. Many people see desalination as the scientific answer to the problem. I personally hope to see the day when desalination will prove to be economic, but unfortunately none of the present methods offers water at a cost anywhere near competitive. For all that, the Government are continuing to support research and are seeking effective ways of co-operating with other European Governments.
Despite this, at the present stage of development the enlargement of existing reservoirs and the building of some new ones will be unavoidable. This makes it absolutely essential that we deal objectively and fairly with objections to schemes and with landowners and tenants whose land is affected by those schemes which are approved.
Therefore, I can only say to the hon. Gentleman, who very fairly has shown a


degree of impatience to know when the review on compensation will be completed, that we are pursuing it as rapidly as we can, that we have very much in mind the situation of the tenant farmer needing compensation, that the White Paper will be published as soon as possible and that legislation will no doubt follow thereafter.

Mr. Whitlock: The hon. Gentleman seemed to infer on compensation that the use of Section 22 of the Agriculture

(Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1963, is open to river authorities, provided they make payment out of revenue—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at five minutes to Two o'clock.